#i soft launched this concept already but i feel like the world at large could use it

[threedroidsforsweetrevenge]

Beyond horny! Just like Beyond meat,but for finding things hot.

[whatareyousearchingfordean]

Happiness Continues

Part 1: The Conception

Summary: Y/n has been feeling stressed with moving and big things happening at work. After a stupid argument with her husband, they both find a way to help her blow off some steam. 

Pairing: Jensen Ackles x Plus Size Reader

Word Count: 3.7K+

Warnings: Language, verbal argument, sexual tension and teasing, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it)

Author’s Note: Now it’s time to officially dive back into the lives of my favorite idiots. Can’t wait to go on this journey with you guys again. Special shout out to my constant hype woman @waywardbeanie who willing squeals with me all the time and my beautiful beta @emoryhemsworth​ I couldn’t do it without all of you too, so please, let me know what you think. Feedback is golden! xoxo Alex

Catch up with the series masterlist and then check out Alexandra’s Library for more by yours truly!

The highway whizzed passed outside her window as she made her way home. Y/n had one hand on the steering wheel as the other rubbed small circles into her temple. It was a Sunday after all, and she had to go into the warehouse. Et Cetera was working on launching a new skincare line, and one of the new machines had caught fire. It was just the icing on top of her already tipping cake. It felt like the only thing she had been doing for the past few weeks was putting out fires, whether it was at work or at home. 

The only thing getting her through the current shit storm that was today was the Memorial Day barbeque celebration at Jared and Gen’s later. Well, actually it was starting about now, but she needed to get home and grab her bathing suit before she could go anywhere. She was pissy that work was making her late, but she had to try and remember that it would all be worth it once the line launched.

As Y/n pulled into the driveway of her and Jensen’s home, she could see the garage door was open, his black Land Rover pulled out and ready to go. Y/n replaced its spot inside with her car, jumping from the cool cab into the sweltering heat of Texas.

Y/n went for the door leading to their mudroom before remembering that the hall was packed tight with boxes, ready for the movers to come and whisk them away. She made a detour back down the drive and into the house through the front door. 

The television played softly somewhere in the background and Y/n assumed Jensen was on his ass in front of it, considering that was where she often found him nowadays. He was enjoying his time off a little too much, but after fifteen years, she couldn’t say he didn’t deserve to. She stopped to take off her heels before venturing further inside, carrying them and her purse in one hand. 

“Jay?” She called out, hoping to find her husband ready to pack the car and go. But as she entered the kitchen, the cooler sat open on the floor, empty of anything, even ice. The woman bit her tongue before moving on towards their bedroom, the sound of the television growing as she neared. 

Passing by his home office, she stopped short, peering through the cracked door. Inside, the room looked as it had been untouched. The books were still lining the large shelves and his desk was strewn with papers and various contracts. 

The sight was all she needed to boil over. Granted, she didn’t have a far way to go considering having to go into work on Sunday had already riled her up. Y/n chewed on the inside of her cheek as she stormed into their room, finding Jensen perched on the edge of the bed. He had their beach bag seemingly packed already behind him, but it was no help to him now. His wife was already steaming.

“Hey honey,” he smiled, the grin fading as she stalked passed him without a word. Y/n tossed her heels into their nearly empty closet before continuing to their bathroom, slamming the door behind her. 

Jensen cocked his head to the side as he stared after where she had disappeared. He knew when she left this morning she was in less than a stellar mood, but he was, unfortunately, completely clueless as to what had her in a mood now. 

“Babe?” He shut off the television and went over to the door, rapping his knuckles against the wood lightly. “Are you okay?” 

“Not now.” Her voice was soft from the other side, a slight echo to it as it reverberated in the empty bathroom.

“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.” He tried the handle of the door, surprisingly finding it locked. His brows knit together, as his wife never locked the door on him. “Y/n/n?” 

“Don’t,” the door swung open then, revealing her now sans the suit she had gone into work in, and only in her panties. “I cannot talk to you right now.” 

“What the hell did I do?” Jensen followed her as she pushed past him, pulling her bathing suit from its place in her drawers and exchanging her panties for the bikini. 

“I have been asking you for a week, a week Jensen, to pack up your office, and this morning I have to go into work to deal with an emergency. I figured that'd be the perfect time for you to get it done, but no! You couldn’t even be bothered to fill the damn cooler for this party!”

Her husband backtracked, blinking at her sudden outburst. “It takes two seconds to fill the cooler, I was waiting until you got home, and my office will take no time at all.”

“Jensen, the movers will be here tomorrow. Tomorrow!” She repeated for emphasis as she pulled a tank and a pair of shorts over her swimsuit. “And we have a party to go to. Are you gonna get all of that done before ten in the morning?” 

“I have time. They have plenty of other things to move first.” 

Y/n clenched her fingers into a fist before relaxing them with a deep breath. “I don’t understand why you couldn’t have done it this morning or even yesterday. Why do you insist on making me more anxious than I already am?” 

“Oh, come on. You know I don’t do that on purpose. I’m sorry that it’s not helping you, but it’s all going to be okay,” he tried, his apology only ticking her off more than she already was. 

“Whatever, I’ll just get over it. Come on, we have a party to go to.” Her tone was clipped and Jensen knew he was still in the dog house. But he also knew his wife well enough to know now was not the time to push her. The two of them could talk about it later. 

He left her to finish getting ready and went to pack the cooler with beer and water and loaded it in the car. Y/n followed him out of the house not even a minute later, their swim bag over her shoulder. The couple climbed into the car in silence, and that’s how they remained the whole drive to Jared’s.

All the other guests had arrived already when they pulled into the driveway. Jensen sighed as he watched his wife jump out of the car without a word. He hit the steering wheel with the heel of his hand, hoping that her nosy family didn’t pick up on the anger rolling off of her.  

He unloaded the cooler and dragged it along behind him, though the garage and out to the poolside. Setting down under some shade, he wasted no time in reaching in and cracking open a bottle of craft beer. 

“What did you do?” Jared’s voice had him nearly choking on the fizzy liquid as it went down his throat. He didn’t even hear his brother-in-law come up behind him.

“What makes you think I’ve done something?” Jensen knew he was being far too defensive, but fuck Jared and his perceptiveness. He had known this would happen.  

“Uh, you two didn’t walk back here hand in hand forgetting there are other people in the world.” Jared had that inquisitorial look in his eye, the same one that nearly had Jensen shitting his pants when he and Y/n had been running around. 

“Okay, first off, we don’t forget there are other people around. And secondly,” Jensen sighed before continuing, “she’s just stressed and taking it out on me.”

“Uh-huh, what did you do?”

“I didn’t pack up the office this morning when she had to run into work, so sue me.” 

“Ah, dude, the movers are coming tomorrow.” Jared wrinkled his nose, but Jensen could see the glimmer of mischief in his eyes.

“I swear to god, you need to go somewhere else, away from me.” Jensen shoved his friend's shoulder, causing Jared to burst out laughing as he sauntered away. The actor shook his head as he reached for another beer to bring his wife. 

As he made his way further into the backyard, he found Y/n sitting at the deck table, having already discarded her tank top. She was chatting with her sisters-in-law, a smile on her face until she noticed him walking her way. But she didn’t make a move to stop him as he neared, instead accepting the beer from him and leaning into his touch when he kissed the crown of her head. It was her way of telling him that she was okay, she only needed a little time, and he could accept that. 

What he couldn’t accept was her blatant teasing throughout the day. Now, he knew she was pissed at him, but she was playing a very dangerous game right now. It started out innocent enough when she had asked him to rub sunblock on her back. She’d laid out along the lounger and Jensen had knelt beside her, rubbing the cream into her skin. It was the small moan she let out as his fingers dug into her muscles that had his breath hitching in his throat. She was careful to keep it low enough that only he would hear but loud enough to set him on edge. 

Her next trick came in the form of flaunting herself in front of him, over and over again. Jumping into the water right in front of him and coming out to lean down for something, giving him the perfect view down her bathing suit. Jared knocked him upside the head one time when he caught Jensen staring and then adjusting himself, quirking an accusatory eyebrow up at his not so subtle action. Jensen supposed he deserved it, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. He finished God only knew what number beer as he glared at her retreating figure. It was clear to him that her actions were no accident now, she knew exactly what she was doing. 

It wasn’t until the watermelon incident that he knew just how much she was riling herself up in all this too. Jensen was in the pool with the kids, having fun tossing the boys in the water between him and Jared. The girls were readying the food for dinner, and Y/n had decided to steal a piece of watermelon. His wife sat down in the chair, biting into the soft flesh of the melon. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as the juice dripped down her chin and landed on the swell of her breast. Y/n made eye contact, smiling at him as she wiped it away with her finger and placed the sweet liquid on her tongue, sucking her finger between her lips for a moment too long. He had to fight back an eye roll, instead deciding to narrow his eyes at her, his tongue licking along his lip and pulling it between his teeth. It seemed to do the trick as he noticed the subtle way she clenched her thighs before crossing her legs. Now he had her right where he wanted her, all primed for the perfect payback.

“What are you up to?” Gen appeared next to Y/n as she watched the interaction between the couple.

“I’m eating watermelon.”

“And making a mess.” 

“That’s one of the joys of eating watermelon in your suit, you don’t have to worry about where the juice goes.” Y/n turned away from her husband’s heated stare to look at the small brunette next to her. 

“Okay,” she raised her hands up, “I do not want to know.” Gen backed away from where her sister-in-law was laughing. No, she really did not want to know. 

Her last harebrained scheme to get her husband going came as the night was coming to an end and she had more alcohol coursing through her veins than was necessary. The sun was disappearing behind the trees and the boys had lit a bonfire. Jensen found a spot on one of the loungers near the fire, his long legs crossed at the ankle in front of him. Y/n came out of the house behind him with his sweater hanging off her shoulders, that glint in her eye still present as she walked over to where he was. 

“You have the bug spray?” She asked him politely.

“Maybe,” he tilted his head at her as she looked around him for it. Spotting it on the patio below, she reached over him, placing her hand for balance on his thigh. Jensen grunted as she stretched across him and snatched the spray bottle, watching her every move. As she moved to stand back up, a devilish smile crossed his features before he grabbed her wrist and caused her to stumble into his lap. 

“Don’t use too much,” his voice was nearly a growl as it reverberated in his chest. 

“Never, dear,” she replied, skimming her supporting hand across the bulge in his swim trunks as she went, feeling her husband up. 

Y/n had to take a deep breath as she walked away from Jensen, the buzz from her many drinks was making her brain fuzzy and needy for her husband. Her plan hadn’t been to wind herself up along with him, but she should have known better, that two could play her little game. 

After applying the spray, she sat down across the fire from her husband, Odette choosing her lap as her resting place as she made her rounds through the adults. Y/n helped her make a couple of s’mores on the fire before handing her off to her father as she headed inside for a mixed drink from Gen’s fridge. 

The air conditioning caused pimples to rise on her heated skin as she entered the home and took off her sweater. Y/n stumbled slightly as she crossed the threshold inside, the numerous drinks of the day taking hold of her brain. The day wasn’t over yet, and she was determined to slip in at least one more. 

By the time she reached the fridge, she heard the door behind her opening and closing again. She paid it no mind as she pulled the juice and soda from the fridge, turning on her heel and bumping the door closed with her hip. 

“I know what you’re doing,” his growl had her nearly jumping out of her skin, the bottles in her arms tumbling ever so slightly before she clumsily regained her grip on them. 

“Jesus.” Y/n set the bottle down on the island in the kitchen, her heart thumping wildly in her chest. Jensen stepped closer to her, invading her personal space, and squaring his shoulders to make himself even bigger than he already was. He knew just how much it made her weak in the knees when he displayed his size difference over her, and he was using that knowledge to his advantage. 

“Come on babe, you can’t play me.” His voice was low, the sound of it reverberating deep in his chest, sending shivers down her spine. “I’ve been watching you clench your thighs all day.” 

“I—” The syllable barely slipped from her lips before his hands were on her, dragging her down the back hall and into the dark laundry room. The soft glow of the moonlight and a far off street lamp illuminated the room just enough for them to see each other. 

Jensen pushed her body against the dryer as he closed the door behind them both. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the low lighting, giving him enough time to lift her onto the machine and slot himself between her open thighs. 

“I’m still pissed at you,” she murmured as he dove into her neck, placing soft open-mouthed kisses against her sensitive skin. 

“So you’re torturing me then?”

“You tick me off, I tick you off. I think it’s only fair.” Her words were a whimper on her lips when Jensen nipped against her collar bone. Y/n ran her hands up his bare back, his skin still heated from the Texas sun. The woman could feel his muscles rippling under her fingertips as he ground his arousal into her core. 

“Mmm, don’t think that’s how this works,” Jensen stepped back from her, her hands falling to her sides to catch herself from falling from the machine. Her chest rose and fell with a deep breath as she tried to calm her hammering heart. “See, I think now’s the time to show you who’s really in charge here.” 

Y/n bit her lip as she looked at her husband up and down. Y/n loved this side of him, the small upturn in his lips sent heat pooling deep in her stomach. Without breaking eye contact, she reached behind her, untying her bathing suit top and dropping it on the washer next to her. She watched his Adam’s apple bob as he fought to keep his composure, but his wife knew him well enough to see the way his tongue peeked out to wet his lower lip. He was on the brink of breaking, and she had just the idea of how to push him over the edge. 

“Then show me,” she purred, sucking two fingers between her lips before disappearing her hand into her bathing suit bottoms. Jensen moved like lightning, his fingers wrapping around her wrist and pulling her hand up near his face. 

“No time for that, baby girl.” Jensen dropped his grip on her, moving to pull her bottoms from her body. Y/n lifted her hips to help him and Jensen placed the barely-there material with the other piece of her bikini. He took back his place in between her legs, attacking her mouth with fervor. Y/n could taste the beer he had been drinking all day on his lips, the taste all-consuming of every other flavor she so loved of her husband, but she didn’t care at this point. She’d been trying to rile him up all day, in turn doing the same thing to herself, and now she wanted the release she knew her husband could provide her. 

He had one hand on her hip and the other was cradling the base of her skull, keeping her as close to his body as he could. The soft moans escaping her body only drove him crazier than he already was. Y/n ran her nails down his back, slipping her hands underneath the elastic of his bathing suit and squeezing the taut muscles of his ass. 

“Fuck me, please,” she begged, far past caring for any decorum at that moment. He already had her naked and wet in her brother’s laundry room, her whole family just outside enjoying a bonfire as the night came to an end. 

“God, anything for you, baby,” Jensen murmured against her lips as she moved her hands to pull his erection from its confines. Y/n guided him to her entrance, a collective sigh falling from their lips as he bottomed out inside her. He stilled as her body adjusted to him, his forehead dropping to her shoulder as he breathed deeply. A surprised gasp popped from her mouth as he pulled out and fucked into her in one swift movement before easily finding his rhythm. 

The laundry room filled with the couple’s collective breaths and the soft creaking of the machine she was placed on. The air grew thick around them as they both frantically chased after their release that they had been building up all day. Y/n’s hands were roaming across the heated skin of Jensen’s back, looking for purchase anywhere she could.

Every muscle in her body was clenching as he drove himself home time and time again. “Jay, fuck—” She wasn’t sure what she was asking for from him, all she knew was that she was almost there. 

“I know honey, I’ve got you.” His voice was low, rumbling deep in his chest as he licked over the shell of her ear. Everything about him was invading her senses, making her forget anything but her husband. Jensen adjusted his hold on his wife, giving himself access to rub tight quick circles to her clit. Before she could react to his touch, she felt her body falling, every muscle shaking around him. Her orgasm pulled him into his shortly afterward, his hot seed coating her walls as his cock twitched inside her. Jensen shuddered under her fingertips, his shaky breaths like music to her ears. Her husband fell into her chest, nuzzling his nose into her collar as he waiting for his breathing to even out. 

“Someone’s gonna come looking for us,” Y/n chuckled as she combed her fingers through his hair. She could feel his smile against her skin before he huffed out a breath. 

“Yeah, and I really don’t feel like being murdered by your brothers tonight.” Jensen placed a kiss to the underside of her jaw before standing up and separating himself from her. He adjusted himself quickly before grabbing her suit for her. Y/n struggled to get the wet garment back on, needing the help of her husband to straighten the material back out. 

Jensen peeked out the door into the dark hallway to ensure the coast was clear before they exited the laundry room. He slipped his fingers between hers and pulled her along with him and back out to enjoy the fire. 

“Well, well, well, look who is holding hands again.” Jeff piped up from the other side of the fire. He had his youngest dead asleep in his lap as he chuckled at his baby sister. 

“Oh,” Y/n laughed as Jensen fell back into his original seat, pulling his wife down with him to sit across his lap. “Can’t stay mad at this face for too long.” Leaning down, she pinched his chin between two fingers and brought his lips to hers, the couple both smiling into the kiss.

Part 2: 5 Weeks Pregnant

Tags are open, send me an ask to be added to the list <3

Forevers: @polina-93​​ @22sarah08​​ @callmekda​​ @hobby27​​ @dawnie1988​​ @awesome-badass-cafeteria-sauce​​ @sleepylunarwolf​ @stiles-stilinski-24-dylan​  @akshi8278​ @superfanficnatural​ @malfoysqueen14​ @deanwanddamons​ @waywardbeanie​ @emoryhemsworth​ @talesmaniac89​ @winchest09​ @katehuntington​ @flamencodiva​ @janicho88​ @anathewierdo​ @ellewritesfix05​ @mrsjenniferwinchester​ @jensengirl83​ @lyarr24​ @smol-and-grumpy​ @supraveng​ @tranquility-or-chaos​

Continues: @traceyaudette​ @death-unbecomes-you​ @rebelemilu​ @colbyskoalas​ @ashleyrose0117 @zpandaqueen​ @stoneyggirl​ @parinarain​ @onethirstyunicorn​ @smoothdogsgirl​ @harryhook-lover​ @spnfamily-j2​ @deanmonandnegansbitch​ @lunarmoon8​ @dvnmbabe​

[chucklegigglechortlesnort]

“Levi’s”

👉👈 i wrote this a while ago and... it’s been sitting in my drafts for a few weeks bc i’m not really sure about it but i mean it’s something right???

this concept popped into my brain after i bought a levi’s hoodie and connected the dots a little later

i hope it’s enjoyable

warnings: minor angst to fluff

Shoving open the door to your room, you flopped onto your bed with a dramatic huff.

You had spent the day in the human world, having accompanied Lucifer and Diavolo on business and the days events had left you completely drained.

Well, almost completely.

You still had enough left in you to spend some time with Levi, who you had promised earlier that day that you’d at least start a new anime that he’d been excited to watch.

You were exhausted and running on fumes but you couldn’t bring yourself to cancel on him last minute. He was just so excited about it and you didn’t want to ruin that by going back on your plans.

You pushed yourself up with a huff, rummaging through the bag of belongings you had managed to convince Diavolo and Lucifer (more so Lucifer - Diavolo was actually curious to see where you lived and therefore easy to convince) to let you snag from your apartment before you returned home to the Devildom.

You quickly shed your daytime wear for an over-sized hoodie and a pair of pajama shorts. Vastly more comfortable, you stepped in front of the mirror - more out of habit than anything else - to check your appearance. The hoodie you had chosen had a large “Levi’s” logo displayed on the front and you snickered to yourself. It was by pure coincidence that you had it, but you couldn’t help but snag it when you saw it hanging in your closet. It was too perfect to pass up and you figured you’d wear it as a joke, even if it wasn’t that funny.

You completed the look with a pair of fuzzy socks before leaving for his room.

When you reached his room, you knocked three times followed by two taps and a jiggle of the doorknob.

“What’s the pass-code?”

“No matter how deep the night -”

“- It always turns to day eventually.” 

There was a click and the doorway opened a crack. Levi peers out, looking around before yanking you into his room. You roll your eyes at his theatrics but allow a smile to creep onto your face as he shuts the door behind you.

“Ready to get this party started?” You asked.

Immediately his face lit up in excitement. It was cute how enthusiastic he was about every new anime or game he started and you couldn’t help but share it. He launched into rambling about how many rave reviews it had gotten, and how it was animated by one of his favorite studios and written by one of his favorite manga authors.

A giggle escaped you on accident and Levi glanced up to defend himself, but any retort quickly died in his throat as soon as his gaze landed on your hoodie. 

A flush rose to his cheeks as he stared at the Levi’s logo splayed across your chest. 

“Levi? Hello? You-”

“Y-your shirt- it- why does it have my name on it?”

You glance down, having momentarily forgotten about your little joke. You let out another giggle, much to Levi’s dismay. 

“Oh, yeah! It’s a popular brand up in the human world and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Funny right?”

Funny.

Levi guessed one would consider that an amusing coincidence, if they weren’t him. 

Or if they didn’t have a massive, ugly crush on you.

Or if the fact that you were basically wearing an item of clothing that declared you as his didn’t nearly send them into a cardiac arrest.

Then yeah he guessed that maybe ‘funny’ would be a way to describe this particular coincidence.

“Y-yeah. Sure.”

The oddly curt response caught you slightly off guard as he turned to stiffly stride over to the gigantic bean bag stationed in front of the obscenely large flat screen that sat opposite of it. You were slow to trail after him, hesitant after the rather cold exchange.

You plopped yourself down beside him on the beanbag moving in to cuddle up to his side, as usual (it had taken him a while to get used to this in the beginning, but luckily he had warmed up to the affection and was often reluctant to let go at the end of the night). However, he not-so-subtly scooted away from you, much to your disappointment.

Had your joke really been that bad?

You knew he may not have found it that funny but... still. You had at least expected a ‘dumb normie’ comment or something.

The terribly familiar concoction of anxiety and shame crept up on you as you settled into your seat, grabbing a pillow from nearby and hugging it to your chest to try and muffle the feeling. You crushed the cushion against you and wrapped your arms around your knees as Levi grabbed the remote and started the anime.

Unfortunately, you couldn’t bring yourself to pay attention, your brain was too occupied with picking apart and replaying the scenario. The soft flashing images only encouraged this hypnotizing lull of negative thoughts and none of your efforts to snap yourself out of it seemed to work. Somewhere in your mind you knew you should stop and that it was ridiculous to get so worked up about such a small issue - if you could even call it that - but the mindset to put that into action eluded you.

At some point your gaze had drifted over to Levi, who was seemingly fine, as well as completely engrossed in the show.

It must’ve been just you then. 

Levi must’ve felt your gaze burning into the side of his skull, because his own eyes flicked over to meet yours and his face went crimson.

“What are you staring at?”

The bite in his voice only managed to strike you deeper.

You felt a tightness in your throat and a stinging sensation beginning to rise behind your eyes.

Nonononono this wasn’t happening. Not over something this freaking stupid.

‘It’s not a big deal.’ You told yourself. ‘You’re reading way too much into it, just stop you idiot.’

However, much to your further disappointment in yourself, you couldn’t manage to hold back your tears.

You tightened your hold on the pillow and buried your face into it in order to muffle your sniffles. The patheticness of your situation did absolutely nothing to improve your mood and all you wanted to do was leave and go to bed so you could cry yourself to sleep like a loser and forget about it in the morning. And probably never where this hoodie again.

This stupid hoodie.

You could feel your sinuses plugging up with mucus and the urge to sniffle came once again, except this time you forgot to hide it with your pillow.

Levi’s gaze fell on you once again at the sound. How were you crying already? You were only on episode three and nothing major happened- it was a slice of life for hell’s sake. It took him a second to register that your eyes weren’t even on the screen and that they were glued to somewhere on the floor and as soon as he saw the welled up tears in your eyes, he panicked.

“_-_____? W-what the hell are you crying for?!”

That’s it. You were absolutely mortified.

“I-it’s nothing, I’m fine, Leviathan. I’m probably overtired. I think I’m just gonna call it a night, okay?” Your voice came out rushed and cracked as you uttered ‘fine’ but you didn’t waste any time dwelling on it as you slid off the bean bag.

Oh. Oh no. You used his full name. You only ever used his full name when you were upset. With him. Oh god oh fuck what had he done.

You were already halfway across the room when he had finally worked up the nerve to chase after you. 

“Wait! _____, I-”

“-Was my joke really that bad?”

Levi froze as you turned around to face him, eyes glossed over with tears and directed anywhere but back at him.

“Huh? No!”

“Well then are you mad at me because we had to postpone tonight a bit because I went to the human world? I thought you were fine with that.”

“No that’s not-”

“Then, why?” Your eyes finally met his, but Levi wasn’t sure if he was relieved or if he just felt worse.

The avatar of envy’s mouth snapped shut and he thought over his next words carefully.

“Why... what?”

Nice. Good one Levi.

Your shoulders dropped and you stepped away.

“...Never mind. Goodnight, Leviathan.”

Levi flinched at the use of his full name, watching as you turned toward the door and crossed the rest of the room.

You placed your hand on the door knob, gently turning it with fatigue that showed in your every move. 

The way your shoulders sagged and the hecitance in your step caused a heavy dread to settle in Levi’s gut and in less than a second he had crossed the remainder of the room, wrapping his arms around you from behind and tugging you into his chest. His face settled in the junction of your neck and shoulder and you had to keep yourself from shuddering when his breath hit your skin.

“Levi-”

“I’m sorry.”

It was barely a whisper but you had heard it perfectly clear.

“I’m sorry for being mean, and for not laughing at your joke, because it was really c-cute and you’re really cute and- um I guess I just didn’t know how to react but that’s because I’m just a stupid shut in and I don’t want you to think that I’m an icky creep or something even though I’m probably not doing that great a job of convincing you other wise and I’m sorry about that too- “

“-Levi.”

“Y-yeah?”

“You’re not just a stupid, creepy shut-in, okay? And I definitely don’t think you are.”

His grip loosens around your shoulders and you wiggle around in his grasp to face him. Your eyes are glazed over and tired, but despite that he can see sparks of something akin to adoration shining in them.

“You don’t?”

“Mm mm.” You hum, shaking your head.

It’s at this point that Levi realizes that your faces are inches apart, and the entirety of your body is pressed flush against his. His face is immediately overtaken with red and he slowly eases away from you. His large hand wraps around your smaller one and he grazes his thumb back and forth over your palm.

“D-do you... want to stay the night?”

You nod softly, a smile gracing your features once again, much to Levi’s relief.

“Yeah, sure.”

He’s quick to tug you back over to the plush bean back in front of the TV, figuring it’s a bit more spacious than his bathtub. He plops down and pulls you into his lap before he can chicken out, wrapping his arms around your waist so you’re pressed against his chest once again.

There are a few beats of silence before Levi’s voice rings softly in your ears, mumbling groggily as he drifts off to sleep.

“...You should wear that hoodie again.”

“...Hm... mabe I will.”

. . .

“Oh, and Levi?”

“Hm.”

“Apology accepted.”

The next thing Levi feels is a pair of lips ghost across his neck, but not a second later you’re out like a light.

You were certainly, with out a doubt, going to be the death of him.

[muertawrites]

Two Halves - Chapter Seven (Zuko x Reader)

Part Six

Word Count: 3,000 (really? it seemed longer...)

Author’s Note: I decided to make this one cute because it’s been a hella weird week (year) and I needed some sweet Zuko lovin’ in my life. The only downside is that now I’m piney as fuck, but it’s fine because I’ve got spaghetti from my favorite Italian place in the fridge and comfort food fixes everything. I’d also like to use this time to admit that I’ve always thought King Kuei was cute, because clearly I have a thing for adorable dumbasses who live their lives in denial (shout out to Mark, my ex, fuck you and I hope you miss me every fucking day because we both know you loved me as much as I loved you but were too weak to just own up to your feelings because you’re a punkass little bitch boy ♥). King Kuei and reader are BFFs and that’s canon. 

I hope you’re all holding out okay and staying safe - PSA to wear a mask whenever you go out, make sure it covers both your mouth and nose at all times, wash your hands after being out in public, and stay the hell away from people outside your household. Do something nice for yourself today, you deserve it. I wish you all find a love someday who makes you feel as fluttery inside as these fics make me feel, and that they love you endlessly and fearlessly. I need to stop writing now, I’ve put myself in my feels. 

~ Muerta

Much to the dismay of the international affairs advisors, their opportunities for stalking you about your daily life are drastically cut short when Iroh announces he wants to return to Ba Sing Se. 

“I've been away from the Jasmine Dragon for too long,” he explains, breaking the news over dinner. “I miss her dearly and would like to be with her again.” 

“I should go back to the Earth Kingdom, too,” Toph speaks up. “The metal bending program will probably have to be rebuilt - the idiots I left in charge of it can barely bend rocks.” 

You and Zuko exchange amused looks, though the idea of being left totally alone with him - without the comfort of your mutual friends - makes you lightheaded. Having to go toe to toe with Advisor Qiang and his sketchy, passive aggressive behavior while also navigating a potentially deadly political climate? No sweat. Having to face your husband every day without the distraction of your friends and family to break the awkward tension? Horrifying, but in an exciting, slightly panicky way. 

“It would be a good idea to visit,” Zuko muses, “see how the city is rebuilding. Aang’s coming back in a week or two on his way to the Northern Air Temple, and I bet he’d give us a lift.” 

“Do the international affairs advisors have to come, too?” you ask. “I'm tired of their assistants taking notes on how I prefer to pour my own tea in the morning.” 

Zuko smirks, shaking his head. 

“I'm sending them to the Southern Tribe,” he tells you. “Hakoda’s hosting a summit for them to celebrate our union.” 

“You're finally getting your life changing field trip with Hothead!” Toph cheers, playfully jabbing her elbow into your arm. “Now we can start a club - Sokka really wants to get jackets.” 

As Appa glides through the air, you lean over the edge of his saddle, gazing out at the clouds as they pass. It’s your first time flying, and everything about it amazes and terrifies you - the miniscule landscape below, the shift of Appa’s massive body under his movement and breathing, the cold breeze kissing your cheeks and running its fingers through your hair, the way the sky is so much more vast than you ever could have imagined - it’s like you’ve fallen into a different world entirely. 

You reach down and stroke at Appa’s fur, earning an appreciative grunt from the bison. Aang turns back from his place at the reins to grin at you, much more excited about your first time in the air than you are. 

“What do you think?” he wonders cheerfully. 

“It's like sailing, but in a dream,” you reply. “The clouds remind me of glaciers back home.” 

“Makes you wish you were an air bender, doesn't it?” Aang chuckles. 

You laugh nervously, shaking your head. 

“No! I can't stop thinking about how long the fall is from up here!” 

Aang tosses his head back with laughter, the sound of his voice carried on the wind filling you with the feeling of walking through the threshold of the cottage you shared with Sokka and Katara as a child; neither of them are present, but having Aang nearby feels just as much like home. 

Across the saddle, Zuko smiles at you. You’re a few feet away from him, yet you still feel the warmth from his body as his eyes meet yours; his gaze is different somehow, as if he's seeing you for the first time. You blush, bashfully returning his grin. 

“Are you okay?” Toph asks beside you. She's clutching your hand, neither of you very fond of your height off the ground. “Your heart rate jumped.” 

“I'm fine,” you tell her. “I just looked down.” 

Ba Sing Se is larger than you ever thought a city could be. As you approach, you stare in awe at the epic sprawl of the place, each district looking like its own little country within a quilt of a continent. You've been to the North Pole before, having spent a year there after the war, but even the shock of seeing their massive skyline pales in comparison to just how huge the Earth Kingdom is. Zuko smirks at you, his arm wrapping around your shoulders. 

“Wait until you see it from the ground,” he teases. 

You’re even more amazed by the city as you view it from the palace. It sprawls in every direction, some of its buildings reaching as high as Appa can float; Iroh explains that it's a new concept designed by the most renowned Earth Kingdom architects, some of them planning towers that stretch one hundred stories. Everything about the place seems impossible. 

Inside the palace, King Kuei meets you in the entry hall, greeting Aang with a warm hug and Zuko with a firm handshake. 

“It's so good to see you all!” he exclaims. “It's been far too long. Tonight we’re having a party to celebrate your arrival, and to congratulate the newlyweds!” 

You smile, bowing low at the waist as you thank him. 

“My husband has told me of your hospitality,” you say. “It’s an honor to be celebrated by you.” 

When you straighten up, Kuei takes your hand and politely places his lips to the back of your palm, closing his other hand atop it. 

“And I've been told about your exquisite nerve,” he replies, lowering his voice as if sharing a secret. “Your bravery deserves to be celebrated.” 

After a tour of the palace, you and Zuko are led to your suite. The windows in both the sitting room and bedroom look out over an incredible view of the city, in which you can almost see as far as the eastern wall; you can hardly pull yourself away, leaving Zuko the task of inspecting the rooms to ensure everything is in order. 

“We have a problem,” he says, stepping out to where you perch by the sitting room window. “There's only one bed.” 

You snap your head to attention, fixing him with a quizzical expression. 

“... I mean, I guess that's normal,” you reply, piecing the situation together in your head. “We are married.” 

“Do you want me to request another room for myself?” Zuko asks. “I could get one of the bedrolls from Appa’s pack and sleep on the floor.”

You shake your head, pacing over to where he stands. 

“I trust you,” you tell him. “We have to get comfortable with each other at some point.” 

Zuko nods, blushing and unable to hold your gaze. 

“You're right,” he agrees. “I trust you, too.” 

You gently take his hand, causing him to shift his eyes back to yours; you smile, giving his palm a light squeeze. 

“Zuko, it’s okay,” you assure him. “Really. I’m okay with it.” 

Zuko nods again, reaching absently to brush a stray lock of hair behind your ear. 

“I just want you to feel safe,” he admits. “You’ve already got enough to worry about without… all of this.” 

You scoff, rolling your eyes as you smile at him. 

“All you’ve done since the day we met is protect me,” you remind him. “Sleeping with you is the last thing that could possibly worry me.” 

Zuko chuckles, leaning to press a chaste kiss to your forehead. 

“Don’t laugh at me,” he playfully scolds. “Or I’ll make you sleep on the bed roll.” 

You gasp, giggling as you push his shoulder. 

“I can’t believe my own husband would make me sleep on the floor,” you tease. “And in a strange city, no less! You’re so awful to me.” 

Zuko rolls his eyes, smirking as he bends and hooks his arms under your bum, lifting you up over his shoulder. You squeal, laughing as he carries you into the bedroom and flops you down on the mattress, jestfully smacking a pillow into your face. 

“Get changed, Queenie” he tells you, retreating into the sitting room before you can launch a counterattack. “The party’s in an hour.”

In the ballroom of the Earth King’s palace, it seems everyone in the city has turned out to celebrate your arrival. 

You sit in a throne beside Kuei’s, Zuko to your left and Aang to the Earth King’s right. Dignitaries from Kuei’s cabinet as well as various parts of the kingdom come to give their regards, all greeting you much more fondly than many of the guests at your wedding; Kuei is excited to introduce you to everyone, giving fervent, detailed descriptions of what each person does and launching you into long conversations with them. You don’t mind his enthusiasm, finding it endearing that he cares so much and so openly about the people who serve him. 

“Ah, here’s a very special guest!” Kuei announces, cheerfully clapping his hands. 

A woman approaches the throne, leading a large, furry animal up the steps towards you; its long claws and massive stature send a chill through you, but once you look into its beady little eyes and notice its round ears and bumbling demeanor, you’re enamored. 

“Is that a bear?” you ask, excitedly gripping Kuei’s sleeve. 

“Yes!” he cheers. “His name is Bosco; he’s a close friend of mine.” 

Bosco lets out a soft growl as Kuei scratches him under the chin, pulling the fuzzy giant into a tight hug. 

“He loves cuddles and blackberries,” Kuei tells you. “Don’t let his claws scare you - he’s a big softy.” 

One of the servers appears with a bowl of fresh fruit, setting it into your lap for you to share with your newest party guest. You carefully take a blackberry into your palm, holding it out for Bosco to sniff; his nose hovers above your fingers, letting out a few warm huffs of breath onto your skin before licking the berry up into his mouth. You turn to Kuei and give him a wide smile, gathering more berries into your hand for Bosco to eat. 

“I love him,” you tell your host. “He might be coming back to the Fire Nation with me.” 

Kuei laughs, giving Bosco a loving pat on the head as you continue to fatten him up, switching between feeding him and running your fingers through his thick coat, giggling when his tongue flops out to lick your cheek; you never expected an animal fabled to be so fearsome to turn out so sweet. 

Once the bowl of fruit is empty, Bosco settles onto the floor at the foot of Kuei’s throne, letting out a heavy yawn. Kuei reaches to scratch behind his ears, then stands, offering you his hand. 

“Would you like to dance?” he asks. “I heard you and the Avatar made quite the display at your wedding.” 

“We did!” Aang chimes in, also getting to his feet and sweeping Toph (who stands just to the side of the thrones, having declined the royal treatment for the evening) into his arms. “We were taught a few Earth Kingdom dances by your advisors, too!” 

Toph laughs as you’re both led onto the dancefloor, taking her position beside Aang. 

“And that’s why I call him Twinkle Toes,” she jokes. 

Kuei chuckles, taking you by the waist and starting the dance, twirling with you in an interlaced circle between Toph and Aang. You each pass from partner to partner, raising your hands to meet them together and spinning gracefully around each other before returning to the escort you  started with. Kuei’s arm skillfully finds your waist when he takes you back in, each of you facing the opposite direction with your sides pressed together, turning in a clockwise motion. He grins at you, and you can’t help but smile back. 

“You’re a natural!” he praises you. “I’m sorry I have two left feet.” 

You laugh, shaking your head. 

“Back home, they consider me clumsy,” you confess. “I used to step on my brother and sister’s toes when they tried to teach me to dance - I still do sometimes!” 

Kuei chortles, taking your hand in his and repeating the sequence of steps you just completed. You recite the ritual five times before the dance is over, ending with each of you bowing to each other with cheerful, elated smiles. Someone behind Kuei clears his throat, and he turns to find Zuko, his hand outstretched toward you. 

“You promised to teach me to dance,” he reminds you. 

You nod, a burning heat pinkening your cheeks as you take his hand. 

“I did,” you echo. “Thank you for the wonderful dance, your majesty.” 

Kuei smirks knowingly between the two of you, bowing before taking his leave. 

“The pleasure was all mine, my lady,” he says in parting. “It’s rare that I have such an excellent partner.” 

Zuko’s arm locks around your waist, skirting you to the edge of the dance floor where he stands stiffly, holding you in place in front of him. You let out a soft giggle, resting your hands on his chest. 

“I thought you didn’t want to learn how to dance with an audience?” you prod, starting to sway in time with the music. Zuko does the same, his body drifting along in sync with yours. 

“I wouldn’t enjoy the party if I sat through it,” he explains, trying and failing to sound nonchalant. You quirk a brow, grinning teasingly at him. 

“Sure,” you say. “It definitely didn’t have anything to do with me dancing so close with another man.” 

“Not at all,” Zuko replies. His hand at the small of your back clutches you a little tighter, giving himself away. “It looked like fun and I wanted to join in.” 

You roll your eyes, smirking as you take a step back from him, lacing your fingers with his. 

“Let’s find Aang,” you suggest. “He can help me teach you the dance we did at our wedding.” 

For the rest of the evening, you, Aang, Toph, and Zuko occupy a small corner of the dance floor, guiding the Firelord with the steps of your favorite traditional Water Tribe dance. He’s nervous, moving with rigid gestures and clearly unsure of what his body is supposed to do when set to music, but he tries, watching every move you make with rapt attention. By the end of the night he has the dance memorized, and you twirl in time with him as Aang cheers him on, Toph laughing beside him at the ridiculousness of the scene; Kuei even joins in, rousing Bosco from his nap and dancing with the bear on his two hind legs, sending the entire ballroom into gleeful fits. 

“You’re better at this than you think, you know,” you tell Zuko when you’re left alone, dancing with him much the same way you danced with the king earlier in the night. “I noticed at our wedding that you have great rhythm.” 

Zuko blushes, his lips curling into a timid smile. 

“I’m a fighter, not a dancer,” he says. 

“They’re not that different,” you shrug. “From what I’ve seen of fire bending, it’s a lot like dancing.” 

Zuko hums, gently turning you so that your chest is pressed against his, his hand resting firmly at your waist. 

“Maybe it’s the music lessons my mother forced me to take when I was a kid,” he muses. “Uncle still keeps asking me to play the tsungi horn for him when we’re together.” 

“You play the tsungi horn?” you exclaim, eyebrows raising in excitement. “You should play for both of us sometime!” 

Zuko groans, immediately switching the dance so he can pass you off to Aang. 

You lean against the sitting room in your guest suite, watching the lights of Ba Sing Se as they flicker with the movement of its people. The world looks dreamlike from where you sit, as if it's been turned upside down; a black expanse of sky hangs above a sea of stars, and you float between the two, dizzy with the surrealism. 

Zuko emerges from the bedroom, having changed into his pajamas after giving you the chance to do the same. He crosses the room to where you sit, resting a hand on your shoulder. 

“You coming to bed?” he asks. You nod, standing and following him back into the bedroom. 

Zuko allows you to slip between she sheets before him, giving you a few moments to get comfortable before crawling in beside you, keeping to his side of the bed. Even though the mattress is large enough to fit another couple between you, you can still feel the warmth of his skin spreading across the fabric below, feel the weight of his body sharing the same space as yours. Your heart flutters against your ribs, making your breathing shallow. 

“I had fun tonight,” Zuko whispers into the darkness around you. “Thank you for teaching me how to dance.” 

“I had fun, too,” you reply. “I can teach you the dance people do for Water Tribe weddings; I wish we could’ve done it at ours.” 

“I’d like that. I’m sorry we didn’t have much Water Tribe tradition when we got married… We should go back and have a ceremony there. I’d like to see you in a Water Tribe wedding gown.” 

A shiver runs through your veins, heating your skin as if a fire has been lit beneath it. You roll over to face him, making out his silhouette against the rest of the shadows in the room. 

“I’m glad you asked me to marry you,” you admit to him, the manic jitters in your chest rising to your throat. “I don’t think anyone else could treat me better.” 

Zuko reaches his hand towards you, finding yours beneath the blankets and curling his fingers with yours. For a moment you forget that your relationship was arranged, feeling as if you’re lovers instead of leaders, tasked with repairing a world that’s been shattered since long before you were born. 

“I’m glad you agreed,” Zuko answers. “I was afraid you’d hate my guts because I stalked your brother and sister for six months when we were teenagers.” 

You release a breath of laughter, the pressure in your body unraveling with it. Zuko’s thumb runs tenderly across your knuckles, and you forget that anyone else in the world exists except for the two of you. 

“Goodnight, Zuko,” you murmur. 

“Goodnight,” he hums back to you. “Sleep well.” 

You wake early in the morning with his arm draped over your waist, your head tucked under his chin with your cheek pressed to his chest. You drift back to sleep to his quiet, blissful snores, his heartbeat pulsing in time with your own.

📚 table of contents 📚

✨ join me on patreon ✨

{ subscribers: @ladylizzieofdarbyshire @celamoon @omgwhattheeven @i-am-not-a-thot @fandomtrash1616 @dream-alittlebiggerdarling @just-another-romantic @berkeliums @eridanuswave @oleander-in-the-wind @kinismanditory @lammello @peppermenty @theawesomefactor123 @loganrwebb @ijustwannabecanadian @a-hopeless-fan @softvv @oddment-niwit-blubber-tweak @pearl-stonecutter @crazy0t @commander-rex @kittyddandnyla @abbyarchie @smol-grandpa @nonbinary-rogers @themanwiththemetalarmsdoll @witchywrter @canibea-whore-yet @fuckwhateverfuck @eridanuswave @duh-dobrik }

[blackberry-gingham]

Just for Geos bday 👉👈 could i request smt mermaid reader x geo. Like she decides to get legs to visit him that special day. So they pass all day together and like george sho wa him his world and its cute and just 🌸.

*We interupt the hockey player reader x figure skater Paul one shot that I was working on for this very important message*

Oooooo yaaaaas this is so sweet 🥺🥺 And always yes to mermaid reader lmao.

Ugh, curse my east coast time slot, or else I might've been able to get this on time and put it out on his actual birthday 😪 Anyway lol, enjoy and happy belated birthday to Geo ♥️♥️♥️

---

Today is a very special day.

Soft, filtered rays of sunlight undulate down to the ocean floor. It's a bit dark given the depth, but it's enough to make you stir from your sleep. You stretch and swish your tail through the water around you, just before you remember what day it is.

With a burble of air bubbles, you gasp. Your boyfriend, George, is having his birthday today. You snap your tail and launch off your rock, speeding out of your underwater cove straight up to the surface. The water feels as though it's rushing around you, and you briefly wonder if this is how it feels to run in the wind.

Soon enough, you breach the surface with a dramatic flip of your hair. The morning sun beats proudly overhead, and with a little configuring based on its position... It would appear, it's roughly 10 am.

Wonderful! That gives you just enough time to get ready.

You dive back down to your cove and head straight to your small chest of things. It doesn't take long to find what you're looking for, and at least you fetch a beautiful sundress that you found half buried in the ocean floor and some odd trinkets of jewelry to go with it.

See, George thinks he's going to spend his day in and around the ocean with you, but boy do you have a surprise for him.

Back in the old days, during a not so bright spot on the culture of your people, it was common for mermaids to use their powers and trade their tails for legs in order to climb up on land and lure some poor, unsuspecting human to their watery graves. It was a source of food at the time, but as you said, things have changed.

However, the power to switch to legs never went away... It's just extremely uncommon to see.

You've been practicing in secret for months now, all with the anticipation of surprising George with it and having a day on land together. What better time to put it in action then his birthday?

So you fix up your hair as best as you can underwater. You slip on the dress and the jewelry in what you hope is the right fashion. Hm, but something feels... missing.

Ah! You swim back over to your trunk and pull out a pair of slightly tattered, but nonetheless matching heels. These required almost as much practice as transforming and walking, but you managed.

At last, you're ready, and without a moment to lose you swim towards the shore, heels in hands. You can hardly contain your excitement.

You breach a good few feet from the dock where you can already see George is waiting. With a bit of fanageling you manage to slip on your heels and steadily make your way up onto the large, flat beach rocks. Luckily they're not too slippery today, and you safely make it to the little wooden trail.

Feeling confident, you strut as best as you can over to the dock. However, excitement overtakes you and you start to run.

"George! Geooooorge!", you call.

The man in question whips around, entirely confused as to who might have followed him out here... Then, he catches sight of you, a face he recognizes all too well, running and yet wobbling like a baby deer on two legs and a pair of heels.

He blanks completely, suddenly not sure if he's actually awake right now. It would make sense, considering he's dreamed this dream a thousand times before...

You run up and throw your arms around him, giving him a long hug and a quick kiss. "George, it's me! Happy birthday!", you give an excited, tiny little hop, and nearly turn your ankle in the process.

Luckily, George snaps out of the fog of him mind and catches you before any damage is done. He steadies you and helps you straighten up again, but he doesn't let you go.

You breathe a sigh of relief and to to thank him, but when you catch sight of the absolute wonder in his eyes... It catches you off guard.

George reaches out with a shaking hand to brush a bit of hair out of your face, then brings it back to caress your cheek. He takes a gulp of air and a soft, breathy laugh escapes his lips, "... So it is", he says.

Without another word, he pulls you in for a kiss as a salt breeze rustles your skirt and hair. When you seperate, a slow smile makes it's way across his lips as he looks you up and down one more time.

George takes your hand and gives it a gentle squeeze, "Come on then, how'd you like to see the town? And then...", he nods to your legs, "you can tell me how you did that"

You laugh and promise you will as he leads you back to his car. Thousands of things you've never seen before whiz past your eyes faster then you can ask about. George can't help but be amused by your childlike wonder, and he does all he can to answer your questions.

He takes you to all the best spots in town.

First up is the park. You've never seen such lush and soft grass on your entire life. George introduces you to the concept of feeling grass between you toes, and you marvel at how different and wonderful it feels from the sand.

A breeze of fresh air rushes over you as you both lay in the sunny grass, holding hands. You could stay here forever.

But the day moves on, and with the promise of bringing you back one day, he shows you the shopping center next.

It's an amazing place filled with shiny objects and pretty things. You go into just about every store just seeing. George tells you about everything you inquire after, never growing tired of your curiosity.

You don't really get anything, given that you'll be back in the sea soon enough. However, George takes you to the Jewelers and gets himself a new watch and let's you pick out anything you like to take back down with you.

And at last, he takes you to dinner. You're so use to the hustle and bustle of the beach and other locations that the quiet hush of the upscale restaurant. Luckily, your outfit just meets the atmosphere and things go off without a hitch.

To someone who's use to only eating fish, the menu seems impossibly huge with the wide array of dishes. George makes some recommendations, but you decide to stick to what you know for now. The food is delicious and you end the night with two flutes of champagne.

Now that the sun has begun to set, you really must be getting back to the ocean. Despite all the fun, you're quite exhausted from keeping your legs up.

With a hint of sadness that the night must end, George tells you he understands and brings you to the car.

It's a bit of a drive back to the beach, but at least it gives you time to rest. George parks the car and the two of you walk arm in arm out to the abandoned dock. An orange glow ignites the sea and the land while highlighting your beautiful face.

"Well... I guess this is it?", George kicks at some dust, wearing a frown.

You take his chin gently in your hand and lift it up so he sees you eye to eye, "Don't worry, we'll see each other soon", you give him a kiss. "Happy birthday my love"

George smiles and gives you a kiss back. He holds you steady as you finally get to take off your heels, still holding your hand even as you walk away. It's not until you're out of arms reach that he lets go.

You throw one more look over your shoulder and shoot him a flirty wink, "Don't look so glum now, it's your birthday! Tell you what, how about I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Promise?"

"Promise"

With that, you leap of the planks, dive into the water, and speed on home. After all, you need to get your rest for tomorrow.

[imaginesandsmut]

A Fireplace and A Confession

Word Count: 2981

Pairing: Sirius Black x reader

Warnings: Fluff and a lil bit of smut (don't know how to phrase it)

You and Sirius have had a frenemy sort of relationship. One moment you're joking around and playfully throwing food at each other, then next, you're sending each other death glares as you’re both covered in squid ink due to your prank war. What happens when you're both alone in the Gryffindor common room? Will you admit your feelings or will you continue to keep them inside?

Sirius Orion Black. 

When you first saw him at the train station, he was in a fancy wizard suit and you were in a jumper you got from your dad and pants that came from your cousin. You were saying goodbye to your parents before your first year at Hogwarts, you saw his soft face and held his gaze. He stared back at you with the same curiosity and wonder but was snapped out of it when his mother laid a harsh hand on his shoulder and muttered something to him before pushing him away from you.

You knew about the prejudice against muggleborns in the wizarding world and being from a muggle family, you knew your fitting-in-process would be difficult. Many purebloods stuck their nose up at you when you first asked if you could sit with them on the train, the only person who invited you to stay was a red headed girl with bright green eyes. Lily helped you get informed on everything about the wizarding world since she had already read all the history books, your friendship blossomed on that train ride through the snow.

Sirius Black was in your first class. Transfiguration. He commented a stupid remark about muggleborns and their likeness to trolls, as soon as you saw Lily’s face drain colour, you grabbed hold of your ruler and launched it at the back of his head. Sirius whipped his head around and was about to say something before being shushed by Professor McGonagall.

From then you decided you hated Sirius Orion Black.

It was fine because Lily also hated his best friend, James Potter. You both liked their other friends though, Remus and Peter, they were nice and didn’t bully other kids for a quick laugh. The years went by in a blur, first year was a haze of hate and snide comments at each other. Constantly torn between wanting to bicker with them or wanting to ignore them.

Your second year was filled with trying to compete for best grades in the class, almost as if there was an actual prize at the end. Sirius would flaunt his high score on a Transfiguration test whilst you would casually say how you got the top grade in the Care For Magical Creatures assignment. The teachers didn't know whether to stop the arguing or let it continue since you were both rising to be the best in every class.

Third year was when Sirius Black decided to grow out his hair and girls took notice. Obviously, you made fun of him in the beginning when his hair was nothing but the shortest bob on the planet, but you couldn't make fun of him when it reached past his ears. Never kidding yourself, you still made fun of Sirius, but you couldn’t deny that his hair looked good. 

Fourth year was when you both had a prank war and turned Hogwarts into a battle ground. With every misplaced shoe and teeth staining water, you and Sirius Black started getting closer. Even though you both dyed each others hair bright pink before Quidditch trials, and you both shrunk every piece of clothing each other had until there was almost nothing for you two to wear, you and Sirius seemed to smile about it instead of sending scowls at each other. You both had detention after he filled the dinning hall with nifflers at the same time you enchanted every pudding to explode when someone touched it. When McGonagall stuck you both in a room together, forcing you two to talk it out, you and Sirius Black realised that you didn't hate each other. And maybe, you could become friends. 

Fourth year was when Sirius Black became your best friend. 

Fifth year was the one that confused you. Sirius was getting a lot of attention from girls and you hated it. Not because you want to be with Sirius, it was just because he seemed to move his attention from competing and joking around with you to competing his tongue with other girls’ tongues. Lily suggested here and there that maybe you liked him, but that was just as ridiculous as her liking James Potter. You could never see Sirius that way. 

It is now sixth year and Sirius has been ‘boring’ lately. Well, that's what the girls he normally hooks up with have been saying to every girl who would listen. He has seemed to stop meeting up with them in dark corners before class and now spends most of his time in the Gryffindor common room. Every once in a while, Marlene swears she sees him staring at you whilst you're reading or talking to the group. Of course, you didn’t think anything of it drew it up to probably having something on your face at the time. On Friday, after Herbology, you overheard James asking Sirius why he has been acting different lately and all the black haired boy replied with was, “I've got my eye on someone else.”

“He was probably talking about you,” Lily commented whilst applying another layer of lipgloss on, “Merlin knows he stares at the back of your head during Potions more that he actually looks at the board.”

You snorted a little before replying, “Lily, soon enough Sirius will go back to his gaggle of girls that follow him everywhere and you’ll be left with me saying ‘I told you so’.”

Sirius Black never did go back to his ‘gaggle of girls’; every chance of spare time he got he spent with you. It ranged from helping you with homework, walking you to class, asking for you to explain a simple concept to him, and basically any other excuse he could think of.

Now you’re in your final term of sixth year, in the common room with all your friends. You’re supposed to be doing your Care for Magical Creatures assignment but the library is closed and Marlene is ‘using’ your shared bedroom with a Hufflepuff girl.

“I don’t care, James.” You fought back, pointing your pencil at him from across the common room. “Riding a unicorn will not be cool and you will die.”

“But imagine having that on a resume,” James was leaning on the fireplace as he opened his arms wide and pretended to read out a title, “Young Man Rides Unicorn And Doesn’t Die On Contrary To His Friends Belief.”

Remus whacked him on his knee with his book and caused everyone to giggle. Sirius looked over at where you were on the large couch from his chair near the fireplace, smiling at you.

“I love you, Y/N, but I feel like you could have more belief in me.” James was like your older brother, annoying you at any chance and loving you like family at the same time.

“James, I am studying unicorns for my assignment, so I think I would know best if you would die or not.” You looked down at the discarded textbook in your lap, the illustrated Unicorn looking back at you. “Besides, you know they hate men.”

James ignores what you say about him dying and instead asks about your assignment, wondering how it’s coming along. “I don’t see you writing anything down.”

“That is because the only space I can study is here and you guys are a distraction.” You laugh in hopes of not hurting their feelings and making sure that they know you’re not actually upset with them.

“You know what?” Remus announced to the room as he got up from his chair and picked up his books. “I’m gonna head to bed.” 

He sent a look to the rest of the group and they all catch on, saying their goodbyes and goodnights to each other. You give Remus a thankful smile as he says goodnight to you. As you watch Lily leave and see her frame hide behind the staircase turn, you turn your own head back to the fireplace. You thought you were finally alone until you saw Sirius, still sitting in his chair.

“Aren't you going to bed?” You mostly asked this in an attempt to nudge him into leaving. Merlin knows you can't write this assignment with Sirius Black in the room, it’s too distracting.

“Thought I might help.” He got up and brushed off the imaginary dirt from his jeans before making his way over to the couch you’re sitting on and plopping himself down. “I don’t know much about Care For Magical Creatures but I could help you with the writing?”

“You don't even take this class?”

“Y/N, no one takes this class. You’re the only sixth year who kept it as their major subject.”

“Then why help?” You didn’t want to push Sirius away but an unrelenting nervousness was overtaking your body. This nervousness only started a year or so ago, but it’s growing stronger with ever day that passes and you can't figure out why.

“Cause.” He started, taking a quill from his pocket and grabbing a piece of parchment from your pile. “There's frown lines in between your eyebrows and you keep biting the inside of your cheek.”

Sirius points out the two quirks on your face and makes you realise that your were doing them right then. Slowly relaxing your features, you turn to see the paper he held in his hands.

“And what does that have to do with anything?”

“It means you’re stressed,” Sirius said this as if all of Hogwarts knows, “and I don't want you to stress out over a subject you love”.

You didn't know what to say, Sirius is giving up time he could be spending with his friends or sleeping to help you with an assignment. You looked over at him to see him spreading giving you the biggest, cheesiest grin he could muster, causing you to crack a smile on your own face.

“Here is my draft.” You handed him a piece of parchment with a draft of your assignment written badly all over it, the sentences looking like chicken scratch.  “Just copy what I wrote and if you don’t understand my handwriting, just ask me and I'll translate.”

Sirius nodded before beginning to write the final copy of the assignment, his hand steady and smooth. Sirius couldn't help but smile a little, and you couldn't understand why he would when you saw it from the corner of your eye.

Half an hour passed before you started feeling sleepy. You and Sirius have been writing up your final copy of your assignment, one page each. You were doing every odd numbered pages and he was doing the even. You were almost done with your last page when you felt your head starting to lower onto his shoulder. You felt Sirius tense for a moment before relaxing and continuing his writing.

You told yourself that you’ll only close your eyes for a few minutes before going back to work, but when you woke up, you noticed a pile of stacked and perfect parchment papers on the coffee table. Quickly lifting your head up from his resting spot on the back of the couch, you saw Sirius bringing over a hot chocolate from the coffee/hot chocolate machine he and James stole from the Ravenclaw common room.

“How long was I out?”

“Only an hour.” Sirius smiled as he placed your cup down on the coffee table.

“An hour?! What about the assignment?” You scrambled forward to reach for your draft before being pushed back down by Sirius.

“Y/N, calm down.” He chuckled, was it just you or did his chuckle seem to be more heavenly when you’re half asleep. “I finished it for you.”

“Why? You didn’t have to.” You felt bad for him doing the work for you but also thankful cause your hand hurts like hell from all the writing.

Sirius sat down next to you as you shuffled up to be closer to him, “you have been freaking out over this assignment for two weeks now, I wanted to help you but if I stepped over the line, I'm sorry.”

You didn't know what to do so you grabbed your hot chocolate, moved around in your place on the couch to be side by side with him and leant your head on his shoulder, “thank you, Sirius.”

This was the real Sirius. Not the boy who said stupid things about muggles that his mother told him, not the mean boy who made fun of other kids, and definitely not the boy who you hated. The real Sirius is the boy who helps his friends when they need him, the boy who tells his friends that they can do anything they set their mind to, the boy who helps you with your homework when you passed out cause he knows how badly you want a good grade.

You look up at him and catch him staring down at you, his relaxed features make him seem younger, his eyes seemed to be a brighter blue in the light of the fire and his skin looked more golden. You hated that you were noticing all of these things about him, but you hated more that you wanted to keep looking at these things. 

You noticed his hair falling in front of his eyes so you cautiously moved your hand up and tucked it behind his ear, trailing your fingertips back down, over his jawline and down his neck before he grabbed hold that same hand.

Your heart was beating a million miles per hour cause you thought you crossed a line, well, you defiantly crossed a line. You’re supposed to be friends, best friends. Best friends don’t do this, best friends don't make an intimate gesture in the light of a fire when they're alone.

Sirius was still holding your hand, frozen on the spot of his neck that you last touched. He closed his eyes and when he opened them, your breath got caught in your throat.

“What are you doing, Y/N?”

“I was just trying to get your hai-”

“No. What are you doing to me?”

You didn't understand. With his spare hand, Sirius grabbed your hot chocolate from your other hand and placed it back on the table. When he turned back to you he held both of your hands in his and held them by his chest, causing you to shuffle into a more comfortable position, closer to him.

“Sometimes I think we’re just friends cause you never show any interest in me other than when we’re in a group setting......and now we’re alone.....and I can’t keep my eyes off you,” Sirius’ eyes flick down to your lips then back to your eyes, “what do you want, Y/N?”

“I don't know.”

There was a pause as you both looked at each other, then down to each others lips and back up again.

“I want to kiss you.” Sirius whispered.

You waited. You didn't know if he wanted you to say anything or if he was just saying what he thought. Deciding to test the waters, you closed your eyes and whispered, “kiss me.”

With that, Sirius quickly pressed his lips against yours, letting go of your hands and moving you back so you’re lying across the couch and he's hovering over you. Sirius’ hand held your hip as the other was above your head, your hands gravitated towards his hair. You open your mouth for him and he took the opportunity to slip his tongue in, earning a small moan from you. Sirius’ large hand caressed your hip which resulted in your tugging his hair for more. A groan came from the black headed boy as you pulled on his hair, causing him to grind his hips against yours. Sirius could've sworn that the moan that came from you was the most heavenly sound he has ever heard. Wanting to hear it more, Sirius grinded himself down on you as he broke away from your lips and kissed your neck, a few nips here and there.

You were in heaven, looking up at the roof and feeling Sirius grind against you, his hot breath and tongue on your neck and collarbone. You wanted to continue but you didn’t want to be just another girl he has sex with, you couldn't let him charm his way into making you something you're not.

“Sirius.”

Sirius mumbled as he grinded his clothed dick over your thin pyjama shorts, milking a moan from you and a growl from him.

“Sirius.” You tried again.

“Yes?” His voice was dreamy and a little husky, but you couldn't be distracted.

“We can't do this here. We can't do this.”

Sirius lifted his head from your neck and looked at you, stilling the movements of his hips, “what do you mean?”

“I can't be the next girl on your list of conquests, and I defiantly don’t wanna be the girl you hook up with casually as you’re going after someone else.” You pushed him up so he was away from your face so you could see him clearly, and so you're not tempted to kiss him again.

“Y/N, you don't understand, I wan-”

“Thank you so much for helping me write my assignment and for doing the rest of it but if that was just to get in my pants then I'm sorry but it didn't work.” You got up to collect your things and as you were about to leave, Sirius grabbed hold of your hand.

“Y/N, I love you.”

What. Pft, no. No he doesn't. He's Sirius Black. Sirius Black doesn't love anything besides himself, his hair, and stealing Remus’ chocolate.

“You don-”

“I didn’t kiss you because I needed to get my dick wet, I wanted to kiss you because your Y/N.  I’ve wanted to kiss you for years, because I’m in love with you.” Sirius looked stressed, as if every second of silence that passed, you were slipping further and further away from him. Sirius searched your face and when he noticed that you weren't going to say anything, he continued.

“I want to win this war, Y/N, not just for the wizarding world, but to be able to build a future with you. Merlin Y/N, I wanna marry you one day.” Sirius had gotten up now and was pacing the floor in front of you, only a coffee table standing between you. “When I first saw you, I instantly fell. But I was scared, my mother knew you were a muggleborn by the looks of your parents and told me to stay away from you. Threatened to abandon me if I even became your friend. I said that stupid comment in our first class together and you hated me, I didn't know what to do but if you hated me and that was the only was I could get you to notice me, then I would make myself be the person you hated the most.”

Sirius talked with his hands, using them to explain his point properly. Now his hands were flying all over the place, going between messing with his hair and swatting around imaginary bugs.

“God, Y/N, the whole reason why I started that prank war in fourth year was to have a reason to see you everyday.” Sirius laughed a little at the stupidness of his plan but smiled at the relief that it actually worked. “Juvenile, I know but I didn't know what else to do. I loved you and I was stupid”

You didn't know what to say. Sirius Black, your best friend, they guy who you thought hated you for a good part of your school life together, loves you.

“Y/N, please say something. I’m dying here. Please tell me you love me too. I can't go on pretending that you don’t tear me to pieces.”

You were looking at Sirius with wonder on your face, wonder at how lucky you had gotten in this lifetime to find someone. Your mother told you that love is a friendship with more trust, others told you that it was finding the most beautiful person and worshipping them with all your heart. 

But as you stood there in the fire lit common room, finding yourself to love not just your best friend but the most handsome of men is your crowning glory. Slowly, you stepped around the coffee table and moved to stand in front of Sirius. You could tell the boy was freaking out by the way his eyes were wide and how he watched every movement you made.

You raised your hands and held Sirius’ face, looking into his eyes before reaching up to place a quick kiss on his lips, you pulled away and looked up at his closed eyes. “I loved you from the moment I met you, I was just to stubborn to realise.”

Sirius’ eyes sprung open and the biggest grin crept its way onto his face, you smiled back at him as he pulled you into his arms for a hug with his head resting on top of your own head, swinging you around like a rag doll.

“I’m gonna be the best boyfriend you have ever had.”

“Oh really?” You chuckled at his statement. Sirius looked down at you with his award winning smile, he looked so boyish but also so beautiful.

“Really. Cause I know that I love you more than anything in this world. And if that doesn't say something, I don't know what will.”

[darling-dontforgetme]

Tender

- Cordelia Goode x Reader x Sally McKenna

- Sometimes we suffer, and sometimes it’s nice to have people to pull us out of that suffering.

-This didn’t quite go where I wanted, but trigger warning for mentions of abuse and self harm.

- Okay, but like, can you imagine what a power couple Cordelia and Sally would be? They are both so loving and just want to take care of others, and just ahh, I have thoughts. Lots of them. I would probably marry anyone who decides to write smut for them.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

A fierce kick to your heart left bruises blossoming like flowers upon your chest. How ironic, that you had once loved him so fiercely with that same organ he was now trying to beat out of you. A large hand grips your hair and yanks you upward, bringing your face up in time for a fist to make contact with the sharp edge of your cheekbone before a harsh slap sends you reeling back toward the floor. As you gasp and scream and fight your way back to safety, you think about your mother, your childhood, about how you got here. How you tried to find solace in strangers because you couldn’t find it in your own home. The lack of love and violent hands and bruises and fractured bones all led to an even more broken romantic relationship. Your mother taught you that love was pain- she wouldn’t hit you if she didn’t love you, she had to tell you how worthless, how stupid you were to build you up strong against a vicious world. All of that pain led to love that only turned back into pain, but it felt like validation, like he wouldn’t pull your hair or try to scratch out your heart if he didn’t truly love you.

“Sweet girl.”

Slumped on the floor, your cheeks are slick with tears, but you are no longer screaming. You thought you loved him, you probably really did at some point, for you hadn’t known the world could be any better- that there was a softer, more gentle kind of love. But you had found it, in the grocery store of all places, and it came in the form of two tender, blonde women with light, safe hands.

“Baby love, it’s okay. We’re right here.”

Something touches your arm and you flinch so hard that your head bumps into the wall beside you, a soft whimper sliding out between your lips. “I- I’m sorry,” you sob, bunching up the fabric of your shirt in your hands. “I’ll be good. I promise I’ll be good.”

“Hey, hey, no. You are good, so good, sweetheart. Look at me.”

You shake your head, recoiling from the slap that always follows disobedience, but it never comes.

“No one will hurt you here. It’s okay. You can open your eyes.”

“I don’t-.” You don’t know what’s happening or where you are, why he hasn’t hit you for insolence.

“Shh, thats okay. You’re alright.’

“I’m sorry.” You don’t know what else to say, what to do to make this better. He is always so drunk and angry, and it is so hard to tiptoe around his moods.

“No, shh, none of that. Just breathe, okay? Everything’s okay.”

“I’m bad,” you wail, and your tears begin falling more fervently, like you are only denying the inevitable. He already knows how terrible you are- your mother told you, and now he knows, too. He can only be patient for so long before the harsh hand of punishment will fall down on you.

“No, no, of course not. You are good; so, so good.”

For the first time, it occurs to you that the voice doesn’t sound like his. It’s softer, female even, and when you think about it, what you’re sitting on doesn’t feel much like the cold tile of the kitchen floor in your shared house. A hand closes gently over your fist and untangles it from your shirt, and despite your anxiety, you don’t fight the contact.

“Pretty love, please look at us.”

You finally do, opening up your eyes to peek up from the floor, and what you find isn’t an angry man at all, far from it. There’s Sally, with her beautiful brown eyes and frizzy hair, and Cordelia, with her soft lips and pretty smiles. They both sit on their knees about a foot away from you, Cordelia’s hands raised up like she wants to reach for you, comfort you, but she doesn’t want to scare you away. Sally is a little more brave, her hand gripped in your own, but no less worried.

“I’m sorry.” You are curled up in the corner of your room in the Coven, the sounds of young witches just background noise against the thumping beat of your heart in your ears. Cordelia slowly reaches out for you, like you are some sort of small, scared child, and maybe you really, truly are. The second her fingers touch your skin you launch your body into hers, settling in her lap and tucking in close against her chest. Sally scoots in around you, squeezing your hand and pressing a kiss to your forehead. This isn’t the first time they have pulled you out of a flashback, and it likely won’t be the last.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for, sweet girl. We just want you to be okay,” Cordelia soothes, stroking her fingers through your tangled hair.

And here, with them, you almost feel it. At least, it’s as close as you’ve ever been.  Okay is such a foreign concept, something that hadn’t ever been in your vocabulary until recently. You were drowning in such a dark place with such dark people until they came along, like a sliver of heaven in your own personal hell.

Sally cups your chin and tilts your face up. She smiles softly, tears crinkling in the corners of her own eyes. “Baby, we want to understand. We want to help you, but we can’t do that if we don’t know what’s going on.”

You have never told them. In the nine months the three of you have been together, you have yet to breathe a word about your childhood, your first love, how they have opened your eyes to a whole new world- one without bruises and pain and heartache.

You love how much they touch you, how there will always be a gentle hand at the small of your back, or rubbing your shoulder, or just holding onto your own. It is such a contrast to everything you have ever known; that hands could be soft, tender, nonviolent. But despite their reassuring fingers, your body still trembles, so you lay your head against Cordelia’s chest and close your eyes, breathing in deeply. “You know how they say we tend to stick with what we know? How people who grow up in abusive households will typically go into an abusive relationship?”

There’s a sharp intake of breath above you, the body below you twitching with the sudden inhalation. You can imagine the look on Delia’s face; one of surprise and sadness and fear. Sally understands heartbreak, the pain that comes along with love and leaving, and you’ve heard enough stories about Fiona to know that Cordelia has suffered, too. Three broken women, coming together with hope for healing and a better future. Just love, love, love. So much love. 

“Oh, honey,” Cordelia consoles, and she squeezes you tighter, like it might help glue your broken pieces back together, like all of her goodness will slither into the cracks of you and push out all of the terrible things you have endured.

You don’t know where to begin. You know now that your childhood and your first relationship were unstable, violent things, but at the time, they were your normal. It’s difficult to discern the difference in love and hate when every ounce of pain you have ever known has grown from love. But it feels like time to tell them, to let them in. After all, they have been so very patient with you. 

“I- I grew up in a home with a single mom, and she- she had been so beaten down by the world. She worked hard, and it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her fault.” Your voice is timid and stuttering, and you hide into the nape of Cordelia’s neck at such a blatant view of your life. You feel naked, like you are putting the most intimate parts of yourself on display.

You tell them about the sound of skin hitting skin, slaps across your face, kicks to your gut, and you roll up your sleeves to show them the burn scars on your arms. You say more than you mean to, like how you can’t bear to see a bottle of bourbon or smell the perfume in the blue bottle from the local department store because of how they will pull you back into the past, back to black eyes and bleeding skin and fear.

“I’m so sorry,” Sally says, looking down at the marks on your arms. “I wish you would have told me.” Your unstable life has given you weird quirks, unusual fears- cigarettes to be one, but you don’t want Sally to change herself to accommodate you. You had screamed the first time you saw her smoking, screamed and dropped your body into a crouch, hands coming up to protect your head against a threat that no longer existed. Sweet, sweet Sally, always so kind and protective of the ones she loves. You can only imagine what is running through her head, all of the ways to rid the world of all of the people who have hurt you, failed you in some way.

You shake your head, slipping away from Cordelia into your other lover’s lap, arms circling tightly around her midsection, around the ever present leopard print coat. “I don’t want you to change for me, Sally. I like you just as you are, cigarettes and all.”

You kiss her, and then look up to her teary eyes and smile. “I promise, pretty girl. Don’t ever change for me. I just want you to be you, to be Sally.”

As you tuck yourself back against her chest, Sally’s head comes to rest on top of yours, and Cordelia’s arms wrap around the both of you.

“Baby, you know it wasn’t your fault, either?” Cordelia says softly, lips pressed right up against your ear.

You shrug, more or less, knowing that destruction tends to follow behind you. You remember the time your mother compared your love to razor blades, like it was fast and draining, and how anyone who tried to love you would knick themselves if they bothered to come too close. But here, with Sally and Cordelia, your reality felt more like safety scissors, a wall of protection built up around your heart, and the only one to ever get hurt was yourself.

“He didn’t,” you shake your head, unsure of where you are even going with this point. “That’s not what he said. They both, he- he and my mom, they both said I was the problem. I was bad, am. I am bad. I just- it’s me. Everything is my fault.”

You suddenly yank your shirt over your head, pulling back so they can see you, really see you. A shaking finger points at the scars on your chest, where he tried to chisel out your heart with his own hands. The marks are big and ugly, puckered skin crisscrossing over the fragile organ, the home to the awfulness that grows inside you.

Cordelia’s warm hand covers your own, pressing it’s palm up against the physical evidence of your pain. “No,” she says fiercely, eyes blazing with what looks like anger, and you feel like you’ve screwed up because now she is mad at you, too. “No, baby, no. You are not bad, could never be. There is absolutely nothing wrong with who you are because you are the sweetest, most gentle, most beautiful, wonderful girl I have ever seen. Nothing about you is inadequate, or- or defective. They were wrong, sweet girl. They were so wrong about who you are.”

“But it- it has to be me,” you argue, voice growing louder despite your timidity. "I’m the common factor in every situation. I have to be the problem. I have to. I have to be it.”

“No, no, baby.” Sally places her hand over yours and Cordelia’s, still on your chest, still trying to contain the thunder inside of you. Her eyes are set with determination, but somehow they still manage to be soft, still wide open with admiration. “Let us show you what love feels like- real love.”

Reflexively, you stiffen, trying to prepare your body for hard hands and fast kicks and callous words. Love is hard, love is pain, and now they are going to show you that they know you are bad, too.

“No, sweetheart, not like that,” Cordelia promises, letting go of you so that both of her hands can cups your cheeks. “Not like what you’ve known before. Our love is nothing like you have known before.”

You think back to the first time he said he loved you, how it didn’t feel like you had hoped it would. Your heart had plunged at the lack of sincerity in his voice, like he had said it a hundred times already, to a hundred different girls, and you were no more special than the last. It didn’t matter. You didn’t matter. And then when he started hitting you, beating you, throwing words like sharp rocks at your brain, it was like your heart broke and bled all over the bed where there used to be nothing but love.

A soft finger traces down your cheek, pulling you back to Cordelia, to Sally, to the Coven. You blink away tears, but rather than slipping back to where they came from, they begin falling down your cheeks.

“Pretty girl, what are you thinking about?” Sally queries, sweet hands soothing over the marks on your breastbone. She’s studying them, the animalistic manifestation of love gone wrong.  

“You don’t have to hide your heart,” Cordelia encourages. “You can leave it here with us.”

You bite your lip as you look up at both of them, knowing this love is different, better, more gentle, but that doesn’t take away your fear that the world will suddenly flip on you. Kind words will become stabbing, gentle fingers will pinch. You have learned it is better to not share how you are feeling for silence can protect you, can reduce the number of abrasions, both mental and physical, that you wake up with every day. But it has been nine months and Cordelia and Sally have been so delicate with your fragility, never hurting or belittling or bruising. You take a deep breath, mumbling out that you just don’t want to hurt anymore, and soft kisses are instantly pressed to both of your wet cheeks.

“Let us take care of you, babygirl. Please let us help you,” Cordelia asks, Sally nodding along like there’s some sort of invisible thread letting her see the other blonde’s thoughts before she speaks them aloud. “We don’t want to hurt you. We don’t want you to hurt ever again.”

You nod, and it’s hesitant, but then they are both guiding you up and towards the bed. You are pressed into the middle, your girlfriends crawling on either side of you. 

“Show us where you’ve been hurt, sweet love,” Sally says. “Let us heal you.” 

For a while, you just stare at them, and they wait, wait for you to say yes, to give consent like you really have a choice in what happens to you. It has never been your choice before. Finally you push back the hair around your temple, revealing what remains of a candlestick smashing into your skull when you were five.

Cordelia’s lips are the first to press against the damaged skin, the kiss drawn out and delicate, and then Sally takes over, mouth opening so her tongue can scrape lightly over your past injury. 

You continue down your body, pointing out the slash across your arm from a broken bottle when you hadn’t had dinner ready and on the table when he arrived home from work, the marks left from his shoe when he had kicked you so hard in the stomach that you bled. You flip you wrist over to show them the burn from your mother’s curling iron. She had stuck the hot metal against your seven year old skin when you had accidentally burned her while helping her fix her hair. They trail kisses all the way, lips joining together to press side by side over the scribbles covering your heart.

You inhale their scents, Cordelia like lavender and honey and all things soft. Sally still smells like cigarettes, but this time it doesn’t make your heart start running for an exit. Instead, it feels like home, like where you belong; here, with both of these beautiful girls. You feel like everything has stopped, like you have been lost your entire life and the world has finally stilled long enough for you to catch up to yourself.

You are hesitant as they slide your pants down your legs, showing off your own harm against yourself. The marks on your thighs are numerous, stretching all the way from the tops of your knees to the apex of your legs. He told you that they were ugly, made you unlovable, angered him because you were hurting yourself when he was the only one allowed to hurt you. A lot of the cuts are because of him. But they coax your fear out of you, like leading a dog to a bone, lips lingering just a little longer over the more recent ones- the ones still scabbed and healing.

Maybe this love really is different, really is sweet and made up of nothing but tender hands and warm touches. You want to pretend that stars never fall from the sky. There are enough things to wish upon on- dandelions and pennies, eyelashes. You need to know that something is infinite. That you and Sally and Cordelia are not alone, that you have a chance and the universe itself is rooting for you.

[jaunes-erotic-world]

How Long Can You Survive Against The Undefeated Queen

It was that time every two weeks the schedules and scripts were being handed out. Jaune was out on the main floor during that time so he got see many people handing out papers. He looked across the floor to see everyone reacting to their up coming jobs Ren had sighed as Yang and sister made hand motions around his hips clearly he would be dawning girl's clothes again. Everyone else had normal reactions Weiss and Winter talked to the photographer etc. The only thing that caught his eye was Jinn who was looking at her papers and she had a huge smile it was also a smirk as she licked her lips.

He was handed his schedule, no scripts meaning no storied films. He read through, "Photoshoot, Kali an Blake erotic massage, sloppy blowjob from Neo, and ...."

"How long can you hold can you keep going, with Jinn," he heard the gorgeous 7ft tall woman said, "Finally, we'll be working together I believe. I for one am very excited."

Jaune turned around nervously and saw the World's #1 Pornstar, Jinnene "Jinn" Nibor. Men and women alike would kill to have sex with her. She was often called the 'Undefeated Queen' or 'The Spirit of the Orgasm' because she never 'lost' during sex. By never 'lost' they mean her partners have all been left unable to continue before she was. "It would seem so, it's going to be an honor working with you," he replied.

She bent down a bit and said, "No no the word you are looking for is," she whispered slowly in his ear, "pleasure". When she moved her face back her cheek lightly brushed against his for but a moment causing him to shiver, when she stood up fully she made it so her very large chest bounced and finally she gave him a flirty goodbye wave before walking away with a sashay, her butt jiggling with each hip swaying step, Jaune was insanely hard. There was a reason she and Jaune had never performed together yet, despite fans constantly requesting it and Miss say he was extremely talented from day one and his coworkers telling him he was very good. Miss specifically forbid any writer from writing scenes for them, her reasoning he needed two things one experience, it didn't matter how talented you were Jinn would find you weaknesses in seconds, The second was a proper time to release it, sure it would do great if they released it any time but no they needed it to be big. And now there were both those conditions were met roughly a year of experience and the perfect launch, Top Pornstar several years running and this year's Number 1 Newcomer (Male) performing alongside one another for the first time, it was the perfect opportunity.

"Be careful sweetheart there is a reason Jinny took my thrown as all time best," Salem put a hand on his shoulder. "This will be the toughest thing you will ever do alongside her that's why that's always do it together first, when people would shoot with her normally first they think they would be able to handle it properly so they would go in cocky and get taken out very fast, that's why we do 'The Challenge' first now."

The Challenge, it was a popular series and a kind of right of passage, it was at its core a simple one on one shoot with Jinn. However, it was way more, Jinn was "Undefeated Queen" "the Spirit of the Orgasm" she could make anyone pass out before her. The concept was how long could someone last against her. There were three things tracked: Time, number of times you cum, and number of times she cums.

.......

The day of the shoot

.......

Jaune was fully clothed and most of the female coworkers were gone for the time being, nothing that could arouse him till Jinn arrived and that was after the cameras were already rolling, there were no do overs no cuts, just the one continuous take. He heard the director call and the cameras roll he got his calm and professional attitude up as he heard her steps as the music played. While her was normally dressed she came out only in a thong and a 'Pin me down and fuck my tits' shirt however it was a 'Jinn variant' 'I'll pin you down and fuck you with my tits'.

She wasted no time and immediately she was kissing him passionately, while her breasts smoshed again his chest and she began to stroke his bulge. 'Her lips are so soft, she smells so good, her hand feels amazing, how is her hair so silky and her curves her heavenly as I feel...them,' Jaune though before realizing he was so caught up in this he didn't realize his hands had moved or how much time had passed.

He was able to out last her handjob until she stopped and broke the kiss. She got down on her knees in front of Jaune. Jinn pulled his pants all the off and slid his cock into the hole of her shirt and began to do as the shirt said. Jaune moaned and groaned like as she did this it was only made better when she ran her tongue around his cockhead. At this point the only keeping him from cumming was the pressure of her jugs around his shaft but that proved not enough when she took the tip into her mouth and began sucking on the exposed bit. "Fuuuuck I'm cumming," Jaune shouted as his thick semen entered her mouth, she let it hit her face and her pool in her cleavage. The camera behind them zoomed in over Jaune's shoulder so both he and the audience could see show the load in mouth, swallow it and then reopen to show it all gone.

She got up pulling Jaune's shirt over his as she did leaving him naked. She took her own top off using the back to wipe the cum off. She pushed Jaune down, pulled a string on her thong and let it hit the floor before she straddled his face and sat. Jaune wasted no time and began to eat Jinn out, she made a pleased noise as he did before she knelt down and took him down her throat in one motion, Jaune almost immediately came again but he held back and continued to pleasure Jinn, don't be confused by her one nickname Jinn had normal sensitivity and came as easily as other girls, and Jaune was given so help. The other day Blake had slipped him a piece of paper directly from the top ranking male of the challenge and the number two female, Ghira and Kali, giving him a few tips. He went for the spots they mentioned making her moan around his cock. Soon he came again deep in her throat however he managed to keep going as he came and managed to cum just after he finished.

They continued with foreplay until it was 5 to 3, but it was now time for the real thing. He bit his lip and clenched his toes and eyes as she began to ride him. Her insides were warm and tight and drove him mad and because she was gripping his hips he couldn't rely on proper movements to make a counter assault he came again but as he did Jinn kept going and hit against a sensitive spot and she came soon. She lifted herself off letting cum drip out of her before she got on all fours presented herself to Jaune letting him take the reigns if he still could.

He took her from behind and aiming for the weak point near her cervix slamming at in over and over. He spanked the ass he always dreamed of and even managed to reach a mutual orgasm again. But that was when things got bad and Jinn's switch got flipped.

She turned him around and trapped him in an Amazon position till she added an extra three to him and two for her. A reverse anal cowgirl lead to one a piece. Things ended with her letting him take her in a mating press which lead to a three to two before Jaune passed out between her breasts.

Jinn sat up leaving his face where it was. The camera zoomed in and Jinn gave a "Shhhh" and a wink at the camera as she stroked the sleeping boy's head.

[thejenesaisquoigirl]

For your D&D character meme, how 'bout odds for Talise, evens for Tamsyn, and the letter C? :D

Had a feeling this revenge was coming XD *cracks knuckles* Here we go!

1) What would they consider to be their biggest failure?

Talise: Oof. Maybe not being able to save her family, or at least her sister-in-law and nephew. Maybe her (former) deep reliance on alcohol once her memories started coming back. Trauma is a motherfucker

2) What’s the story behind their name?

Tamzen: When it comes to naming characters, I really just start thinking of names that stick out. It started with “Tiernan”–from Pirate Queen–and I must have watched an episode of The Tudors with Tamsin Merchant to remember that name, too. “Tamsin” kept sounding best with the character concept and then the spelling changed to “-zen” as a subtle joke since she’s a monk haha

3) What’s their relationship with their family?

Talise: When she was Hosanna, very close. They all loved learning (though maybe different things), the people in their city, and each other. She was closest to her brother, Yanis, despite their age difference. She felt adrift without a family unit, having a ship and crew helped, and finding Yanis has upset any equilibrium she was finding. 

4) What’s one song that describes them or is them?

Tamzen: Not many peeps know this, but she was built to be the personification of the “Morgan: Amor Tristis (or Morgan - Amor Tristis on Spotify)” instrumental from the Ah! My Goddess movie. My all-time favorite instrumental and it suits her story.

5) Who is their best friend?

Talise: Expanding on the Yanis thing, he was her best friend growing up. So the years in which she thought he was dead and that she failed him were rough…but she was working towards a place of resignation…then they found him alive. It’s super weird now because yes, her brother used to be able to embarrass her; but now, it’s the first time she’s ever felt shame. Hosanna, while sharing a small flair for the dramatic, was a very different person than Talise was crafted to be. But in the party, Jax is the closest to a best friend, no contest. 

6) Why are they their class?

Tamzen: She ran away from the city after her heartbreak and stumbled across a traveling group of mousefolk. Most of them were monks but since she stayed with the leader and his wife (the only ones with stuff able to house a larger humanoid), they were the ones who taught her as a way to find calm and take back a sense of control. 

7) What do they think of their party members?

Talise: She feels distinct lines in the sand. At first, they seemed only about their sleeping habits (there was no other way the rooming arrangements could have shaken out and everyone live). But now, it feels very much like two separate factions working together. Separately: Q- she’s terrified of everything she does being in that book, and she has a hard time wrestling with his innocent naiveté when it reminds her of who she used to be. Briony- Not used to being around women in a strictly friendship sense, but is happy for her presence so Q has someone of a similar maturity. Braxton- He’s rarely there. Jax- They instinctually understand each other. It’s complicated but in a good way. Caspian- Like recognizes like but she feels they have different motivations behind collecting information…and it’s hard for her to move beyond a betrayal of trust.

8) In what ways are they similar to you?

Tamzen: Extremely calm under pressure, thinks she’s never good enough to be significant to anyone enough to not leave her, thoughtful gift-giver, gives herself for others until there’s nothing left, can have an accidentally sharp sense of humor, deep well of feeling and protectiveness for those she considers “hers”

9) In what ways are they different from you?

Talise: Unashamed in the way she moves through the world, unabashedly flirtatious and teasing, confident, how she copes with things (tends to be physical indulgences), seeing trust as black and white, unafraid of confrontation or large birds

10) What do they look for in a romantic partner, if they have a romantic orientation?

Tamzen: Someone who doesn’t see her as second best or not enough. Someone she doesn’t need to take care of but who can take care of her. Tamzen has a competency kink a mile wide; so if they’re even-keeled, stronger, a better fighter, and extremely skilled in what they do…they’re definitely her type. She’s a pretty quiet person, so they need to be comfortable with silence and understand things unsaid as she’s very action-oriented. You can tell a lot about how she feels about someone based on her actions, not her words. They also need to love her son.

11) If they had a patronus or animagus form, what would it be?

Talise: Ooooooooo….idk. Maybe a panther animagus? Something that slinks around with confidence but can be very soft. Patronus would be a cat like Talis or a hippogriff like Fantôme…or a peafowl. 

12) What do they smell like?

Tamzen: Orange blossoms and vanilla, with hints of herbs that can be used medicinally (eg: lavender, tea tree, etc)

13) What is their secret skill?

Talise: Sketching/drawing. She’s intensely private about it; but has charcoal, pencils, and a sketchbook in her pack that’s rather like a diary.  

14) What is their relationship to spirituality?

Tamzen: Complicated haha. She’s a “tsuki kitsune” and I tweaked that to mean she’s a fox blessed by the goddess of love with the potential of becoming “human.” Her “parents” are the guardians of a special, unknown spot in a forest the goddess has declared sacred; there to take care of the clearing and of any creature blessed by it…and Tamzen was a fox spawned  there. Anyways, so even as a fox, she was engrained with this strong belief in the goddess and had an awareness of her presence; but then something devastating happened with the person Tamzen thought she was fated to be with–who had been the cause of her transformation. Ever since, Tamzen has had a tumultuous time with the idea of love…much less having firm faith in her goddess, because she feels betrayed. She’s slowly trying to repair her side of the relationship through making sure her friends find love; but she still thinks she’s been abandoned by someone she had absolute faith in, so she’s weary.

15) If they were to be remembered for something, what would they want to be remembered for?

Talise: NOT like what they were shouting at Hosanna. She’d like to be remembered, in general, rather than lost to lines in a book. She wants people to speak of her and the small amount of goodness she’s put into the world.

16) Why did they become an adventurer?

Tamzen: Happenstance led to her becoming a monk…and she needed additional discipline to try to silence the rage and nastiness brewing inside of her, so she joined the army. The adventuring grew from that.

17) What’s one thing about their backstory that came to you after you already started playing the campaign?

Talise: THIS HAPPENS ALL THE TIME. One notable thing–I hadn’t even thought about her being an alcoholic (sober now) until making her playlist. For some reason, “Chandelier” kept coming up and it had to have been a sign because it’s deepened her in ways I wasn’t expecting. Also her tattoos.

18) Do you have any headcanons for them that haven’t come up in game? Or headcanons for other party members?

Tamzen: Totes! She plays the lute only for Tal or when she needs to really think through something–frequently those moments are one in the same when he’s playing outside. Her internal crisis over always being second best and slowly being resigned to it. Party members: Mama: they sometimes read together (even though Tamzen doesn’t like to read), trade skills (Mama helps her build strength and she helps Mama with flexibility), and that Mama has to spend extra time in front of a mirror before going to a fancy event to take in the fact that this is her life now and she gets to wear these pretty things and be feminine. Kerrick: that he’ll sometime have ink in his hair from running his fingers through it while copying down spells. TBD: thinks it’s hilarious how he still hasn’t had to explain his name and has a running bet with himself over it. Finn: she catches Tal speaking squeakspeak to Finn while playing and Finn just going with it and trying to learn the game through context instead.

19) Any ships with your character? If a PC or NPC, what interaction launched it?

Talise: YOU DID THIS ON PURPOSE, SHIPPY MCSHIPPERSON xD. She’s the first character in a LONG time I legit ship with another PC. Whether it becomes romantic or remains platonic (it’s not just up to me or Talise), Jax is the most significant person in her life–excluding her brother. They just got each other from day one and they seem to be the only ones able to easily talk to the other, even when the subject is difficult. The canon you created about her feeling safe with Jax is 100% true; ever since Before, she has a hard time sleeping around other people but she trusts him enough to even share a bed…and he’s the only one with whom she would never be anything but truthful. At their core, they are people reinventing themselves after tragedy but don’t know if they’re doing it right. But Jax makes Talise feel it’s alright to be who she authentically is rather than acting the part she’s written for herself; and to find joy again in the things from her past. The ship’s legit launch was after their serious conversation about “equivalent exchange” in relationships (about Caspian) and has since been buoyed by all their side chats + interactions. “…are you just going to stare at me?” “Until you’re ready.”

20) What would your character consider their biggest success? Or what is your favorite success your character has had so far?

Tamzen: Tal and facing Silas again. She’s really surprised me in how she’s been able to grow to where she is now…so that’s an awesome success because it feels like there’s still more growing for her to do emotionally. But the ultimate success EVER was the gift of the hearthstone to Mama. It was canon lore created on the fly and it was so meaningful and has become a cornerstone of Tamzen’s character. 

Letter C: 

Smartest- Talise and Syl are the most booksmart; Calla is the wisest about people (followed by Talise and Tamzen); Vi is the smartest about how to use people for her advantage; Mireth is the most diplomatically savvy.Most Attractive- Tamzen is that annoying woman who looks beautiful even without makeup (#blessed) but isn’t necessarily sexy like Talise is. From there it’s Mireth (that half elf/half fae glowup), Calla (aasimar moon baby),  Lady Vi (moon elf tall, slim model build), Evi (Italian witchy woman), and then Syl (striking but not always considered beautiful).Hogwarts- Ravenclaws are Talise and Syl. Slytherins are Lady Vi and Evi. Hufflepuffs are Calla and Mireth. Gryffindor is Tamzen.

[theajaheira]

very really married (7/?)

read it on ao3!

this is not technically new writing; i just did a lot of editing and now there is more fic. since i last updated this fic in......november??? let’s copy-paste the summary again:

Giles and Jenny's flights to Sunnydale both stop over in Las Vegas. On the same day. Naturally, a chance encounter leads to a drunken marriage, one that they mutually agree to keep up for appearances.

Which is to say: Giles is going to have to figure out how to hide his fake marriage from his new Slayer (and everyone else) while also hiding his new Slayer from his fake wife (and everyone else). And his complex feelings for Jenny aren't helping anything.

Odd as it was, the memories of the night in Vegas didn’t satisfy Giles as much as they should have. This wasn’t something that he was used to. Generally, whether it was a fling or a serious relationship, the desire for closeness and intimacy wasn’t quite as overwhelming after the first time they had slept together. He and Jenny had consummated their marriage the night they met, and yet he felt a new, hopeless longing every time he looked at her, as though they hadn’t so much as held hands.

It took him three days to finally admit that it was because he hadn’t known Jenny when they had been intimate. Clumsy or perfect, passionate or passionless, he still didn’t know what it would be like to go to bed with Jenny Calendar when he genuinely liked being around her. Things that had once been sources of annoyance had somehow stumbled into things that made him feel…fluttery. Soft. The strangest kind of settled.

But the fact remained that Giles was not at all willing to make any sort of amorous overture. Jenny had made it quite clear that his romantic advances would not be welcome or appreciated, and abusing his position as her husband was a reprehensible concept. Much as he hated existing in uncertain-relationship limbo, it seemed wholly safer than making his budding feelings known and making an already strained situation more difficult than it had to be.

This all flew out the window when Jenny entered his office and announced, “So! We should go on a date.”

“What,” said Giles weakly.

“A date,” said Jenny. “You know, going out, seeing the sights, fun stuff like that?”

“What,” said Giles again. It wasn’t really a question, he just couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Rupert, you do know what a date is, don’t you?” Jenny was biting her lip, eyes sparkling. “Listen—”

“What does a date have to do with helping us look like we have real feelings for each other?” Giles asked with genuine confusion.

Jenny’s smile vanished. “Nothing,” she said. “You know what? Never mind. This was—stupid. It was stupid. It was a stupid idea that I thought would help us look married because why else would I ask you out on a date? No reason! Am I talking a lot? I’m talking a lot. I’m going to go teach class.” And before Giles could fully process what had just happened, she’d bolted, not even bothering to shut the door behind her.

She was moving so fast that she nearly knocked over Buffy, who probably would have fallen down if not for Slayer balance. As it was, Buffy had to grab the doorframe. “Jeez, Giles, you finally scare her off?” she quipped.

Giles ran through the sequence of events five times in his head. All the variables seemed to point to—but no, she’d said she didn’t want any romantic contact with him—

She said maybe, said an utterly unhelpful voice in the back of his head. She said maybe she didn’t want that.

Regardless—

“Giles, you do know you’re setting a world record for Most Easily Distracted Watcher, right?” Buffy tossed her bag onto the table, nearly knocking over one of the precarious stacks of books from the previous night’s research. “You and Ms. Calendar have, like, the most disgustingly functional relationship ever. Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s fine.”

“Thank you,” said Giles, “I think.”

“So!” said Buffy brightly. “That ring we got off that vamp last night!”

“What?” Giles winced. “Oh! Yes.” Attempting to look appropriately Watcherly, he launched into a detailed explanation of the very limited information he had, and did not think about how his romantically-challenged wife might have been trying to properly ask him out. Not in the slightest.

He really, really should have been translating, but the words were twisting on him every time he tried. Doom and disaster became date,and ashes was ask was why would I ask you out, and the Anointed One was Jenny Calendar’s lips are extraordinarily kissable for some absolutely bloody unfathomable reason. By third period he was frustrated, by fourth he was vexed,and by lunch break, he was ready to snap. He was a Watcher, damn it, and his responsibility was to the Slayer, not his wife’s extraordinarily kissable lips! And frankly, if he was focusing on a part of Jenny that was particularly kissable, it wouldn’t be her lips, it would be—

And there he was, yet again thinking about Jenny in a way that was thoroughly inappropriate for the workplace. “Splendid,” said Giles to the ceiling. “This is my life now.”

“You okay?”

Giles turned in his chair so fast that he overbalanced and fell out of it.

“Oh, god, I’m starting to understand why I have to fix you up so often,” said Jenny with a rueful laugh, kneeling down next to him and gently tugging at his hands. “Rupert? Don’t die on me, okay? I really don’t want to have to tell the morgue guys that you died falling out of your chair.”

“Truly an undignified death,” said Giles, his thoughts still on the prophecy that needed translating. “Listen, Jenny, I—”

“No, I, um, that was my bad,” said Jenny, smiling sheepishly. “I sprung that one on you and ran.” She exhaled, looking a little embarrassed, and sat on the floor, waiting for Giles to pull himself up. When he was sitting next to her, she said, “I don’t—um, I haven’t—”

“Yes?”

Jenny was looking at her slightly scuffed shoes. Fiddling with the hem of her sleeve, she said carefully, “I don’t think anyone’s ever comforted me the way you did last week.”

Giles wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. It took him a moment to finally figure it out. “The last time someone fussed over my injuries was when I was ten years old,” he said. “After that, it was all toughen up, Rupert, be a man.” And be a Watcher, too, but he didn’t say that. “I give largely what I receive, Jenny,” he said, “and while this—this whole marriage situation has been a trying situation for the both of us, you’ve handled it admirably and kindly.”

Jenny raised an eyebrow.

“Combatively yet compassionately,” Giles amended.

“That sounds way more on the nose than admirably and kindly,” said Jenny, looking up at him with a wobbly grin.

“Your asking me out took me by surprise,” Giles finished, “but…it’s not something I’m opposed to, if that’s what you want.”

“I think what I’m trying to get at is that I don’t know what I want,” said Jenny quietly. “This is a weird situation, Rupert. It’s hard enough for me to figure out how I feel about a person even without being fake-married to them, and…I thought maybe a date might help clarify things. For both of us.”

“That makes a startling amount of sense,” said Giles, surprised.

“Is me having a good idea that startling to you?” teased Jenny, leaning against him. Tentatively, Giles rested an arm around her shoulders, and his heart leapt when she didn’t pull away. “So, um, is tonight good?”

Tonight. All of a sudden, the words Giles had been poring over finally clicked together in his brain. The evening of the thousandth day of the advent of Septus—“Tonight’s no good,” he said weakly.

“Oh.” The hurt note in Jenny’s voice tugged Giles away from thoughts of the latest prophecy and solidly back to her. “Um. Okay. I mean, if—”

“No, Jenny, I, I still want to go out with you,” Giles said hastily, “it’s just that I was rather distracted by our conversation, and I need to catch up on the work I missed. Tomorrow would be lovely, or perhaps the day after—?”

Jenny blinked, then smiled.“Yeah, okay,” she said. “Tomorrow. Only you’d better not come home tonight all banged up, England, because we’re running way low on Band-Aids.”

“All right,” said Giles.

“Okay,” said Jenny.

He squeezed her shoulder. She surprised him by winding her arms around his neck, tugging him into a gentle hug.

“Uh,” said Willow, who had just come up to the open doorway.

“God, are they still in there being weird?” came Buffy’s voice from the library. “You’d think they’d take, like, a two-second break between classes or something.”

“Sounds like you’ve got business to attend to,” said Jenny to Giles, giving Willow a little grin. Willow gave Jenny a bemused smile back, then turned to hurry and chat more with Buffy about—a boy? Giles couldn’t make it out, and didn’t really care, because Jenny was now turning back to him. “I should go,” she said. “Leave you to your job thing.”

“Ah, yes, my job thing,” said Giles dryly. “How utterly American of you—” He was cut off by his own blush as Jenny pressed a quick kiss to his cheek, and could only watch as she pulled herself up and exited the library with grace.

He sat there feeling all fluttery for a good two seconds, before he remembered exactly what the Aurelian prophecy had said. Wincing a little, he pulled himself up to enter the library. “Willow, Buffy, it’s, it’s good that you’re here,” he said, still a bit flustered. Good lord, Giles, pull yourself together. “There is a violent and disturbing prophecy about to be fulfilled.”

Buffy, who had already been opening her mouth with a teasing look in her eyes, froze. “The Order of Aurelius?” she asked.

“You were spot-on about the connection,” Giles confirmed grimly. “I've looked at the writings of Aurelius himself, and he prophesied that the brethren of his order would come to the Master and bring him the Anointed.”

“Who's that?” asked Willow.

Giles really wished he hadn’t been so distracted while he was translating. “Well, I-I don't know exactly,” he managed, “a warrior, but it says he will rise from the ashes of the Five on the evening of the thousandth day after the Advent of Septus.” This, at least, he’d finally figured out.

“Well, we'll be ready whenever it is,” said Buffy with conviction.

“Which is tonight,” Giles clarified.

Buffy took this in. “Tonight, okay…” She stopped, eyes wide with horror. “Not okay! It can't be tonight!”

“I can check again,” said Giles apprehensively, blinked, remembered that the calculations had been the one part he’d managed to do correctly, and hastily added, “but it’ll produce the same results, Buffy, my calculations are quite precise.”

“You were getting all smoochy with your wife in your office!” Buffy persisted, a plaintive whine in her voice. “There’s no way your calculations could be perfect, Giles!”

“Buffy has a really important date,” Willow explained.

“Owen!” Buffy added for clarification.

The name rang a bell. Owen Thurman, one of the seven people outside Buffy and her cohorts who had actually entered the library to check out a book. “Ah,” said Giles, not entirely sure what to do in this situation. When he himself had spent the last two hours thinking about Jenny to the detriment of his translations, it seemed a double standard to tell Buffy off for ignoring her destiny in favor of a date. “Well—it—the—prophecy,” he managed lamely, “is obviously more—important?”

“You don’t sound too sure about that, Giles,” said Buffy, seeing his indecision and (as usual) attempting to utilize it. “I mean, come on, weren’t you just asking your super amazing wife out on a date two seconds ago?”

“You heard that?” said Giles without thinking, then went flaming red. “She asked me,” he added, then winced; he seemed to be digging himself a bigger hole.

“My point exactly,” said Buffy, looking up at him with large puppy eyes—a more effective weapon than any quarterstaff, and Giles resented it. “I can totally just take down this Anointed guy whenever he shows up, right? You get a whole bunch of kisses from Ms. Calendar, I hopefully get a whole bunch of kisses from Owen—”

That did it. “There will be no—no kisses,” said Giles too loudly, “and no dates, there is an important prophecy that, if not thwarted, could lead to the deaths of those we cherish!”

“Whoa, Giles, cherish?” said Buffy, eyebrows raised. “I just wanna go on a date.” She blinked, then beamed. “Aww, do you wanna protect Ms. Calendar from the Anointed? That’s so cute!”

“They’re so cute,” Willow added, grinning in agreement.

Giles really didn’t want his day or his Watcher responsibilities to go on another Jenny-related tangent. “If my affection for my wife motivates you to actually listen to what I’m saying,” he persisted, “then by all means, do continue to appreciate it. But the point remains that the dark forces are aligning against us, and we have a chance to beat them back. Tonight, we go into battle—”

“Perhaps I miscalculated,” said Giles dismally.

“I’m thinking yeah,” said Buffy, who was still visibly glowering.

Giles was beginning to feel very foolish. He could have had a lovely date with Jenny, and instead here he was, sitting in a graveyard with an extremely irritable Buffy Summers. “Well, you know what they say,” he said, trying to keep the conversation light and optimistic. “Ninety percent of the vampire slaying game is waiting.”

“You couldn't have told me that ninety percent ago?” Buffy muttered.

Resigned, Giles pulled himself up. “Well,” he said, “we've certainly waited here long enough.”

“Besides, there aren't any fresh graves,” Buffy added pointedly. “Who's gonna rise?”

“Apparently no one tonight,” said Giles sheepishly.

The effect this had on Buffy was utterly astounding. Her ill-tempered demeanor forgotten, she jumped to her feet, all but bouncing. “Then I can bail?” she asked excitedly. “I can go to the Bronze and find Owen?”

“Oh, very well then,” said Giles, feeling a bit irritable himself. “Follow your hormones if you want.” As Buffy began to head away, he added, “But I assume I don't have to warn you about the hazards of becoming personally involved with someone who's unaware of your unique condition.”

Buffy raised an eyebrow. “You’re one to talk,” she scoffed, looking affronted. “You married someone who doesn’t know you’re a Watcher.”

Giles felt her statement more deeply than he probably should have. The situation with Jenny was rapidly becoming much more complex than a fake marriage, and the things he kept from her were beginning to weigh much more heavily than they had any right to. He was doing the right thing, he knew that— “I keep things from Jenny for her protection,” he said, but it didn’t sound as convincing as it had when he’d first said it.

Buffy seemed to sense that change as well, because she didn’t press him further. “Well, I can do that for Owen too,” she said, and actually reached out to gently pat his shoulder. It was a surprisingly sweet gesture, especially coming from a girl who yawned her way through his lectures on duty and destiny. Buffy, Giles was beginning to realize, had different ways of showing that she cared, and not necessarily academically-minded ones. “And from what I can tell, Giles, you’re doing a great job keeping her safe. A whole handful of people have already died in the last month, but Ms. Calendar hasn’t even gotten a scrape, so—that seems pretty okay to me.”

“You think so?” said Giles, surprised by how much he had needed to hear something like that.

“I know so,” said Buffy. “Now can I please go find Owen?”

Despite himself, Giles smiled a bit. “All right,” he said. “Go find Owen.” He was, of course, bothered by the prophecy not coming to fruition, but he could look over it again tomorrow with his head a bit less muddled. After all, with things going so well with Jenny and Buffy alike, it was quite possible that there was a lot less to worry about.

This possibility was smashed to bits about twenty-four hours later.

“Rupert,” said Jenny impatiently, shifting from one foot to the other by the door, “what is so important in that paper?”

“Damn it all to hell,” Giles muttered, grabbing a red pen and circling the headline, then shoving the newspaper into his bag. Turning from the dining room table, he felt a twist of sadness as he saw that Jenny had dressed up, leather jacket thrown over a long red dress—she’d even done up her hair. “Listen, Jenny, I, I need to run a quick errand before we—it’s a work responsibility, you must understand—”

Jenny’s impatience seemed to dissipate at that. “You look so upset about it,” she said with a rueful affection, stepping up to him and gently straightening his tie. “It’s okay. Just—” Her eyes lit up. “Hey, I could come with you!” At Giles’s look, she laughed, letting her hand drift to rest on his shoulder. “Don’t get all panicky, Rupert, I don’t need to get out of the car or anything, I just—if you’re running errands, it could be nice to have company, right?”

Giles considered this. It was true that bringing Jenny along wasn’t the wisest idea, but selfishly, he rather liked the thought of having her in the car. Really, he only needed to check in with Buffy, and then he could—oh no.

“Rupert?”

“My judgment is compromised,” said Giles helplessly.

Jenny frowned a little. “Okay, weirdo,” she said, and patted his shoulder. “Are we heading out to the car?”

Giles tried to remember the many, many reasons why his job as a Watcher was a thousand times more important than Jenny. He’d been so sure of all of them, those first few weeks of their marriage, when Jenny was turning the house upside down and yelling at him about computers, but…he cared about her. He hadn’t expected that to ever happen, and it was throwing him thoroughly off guard.

“We’re heading out to the car,” he said with finality. This sense of utter discombobulation would exist whether or not he and Jenny went on their date; he wasn’t about to heap missing her company right on top of it.

Jenny beamed. “Great!” she said, and opened the door, extending her arm. Surprised, Giles took it. “So are you gonna tell me where we’re going, or do I get to guess?”

“We’re going to Buffy’s,” said Giles, letting her lead him out the door and shut it behind them.

Jenny’s smile flickered; she looked almost suspicious. “Buffy’s?” she said. “At this hour?”

“Good lord, Jenny,” said Giles, going bright red. “Do you really think I would be inappropriately involved with a student?”

His reaction seemed to satisfy Jenny. Her mouth twitched. “No, I really didn’t,” she said. “It’d be a pretty stupid move to bring me if you were. So why are we off to Buffy’s?”

“She’s got nearly seventy-five dollars in overdue book fees and she’s been skirting the subject,” said Giles, the lie coming surprisingly effortlessly. He didn’t like how easily he’d become accustomed to lying to Jenny, but the fate of the world did depend on it, more often than not. “I thought I’d talk to her mum, see if that helps encourage them both to pay up.”

“So we’re the library mafia?”

Startled into laughter, Giles nearly tripped on his way down the porch, and had to grab onto the rail behind Jenny to steady himself. She was laughing too, reaching up to grip his lapels, and—god, it was intoxicating being this close to her. A strand of loose hair had fallen out of her updo, and without thinking, he tucked it gently behind her ear. “Here,” he murmured.

Jenny’s eyelashes fluttered, her smile becoming something almost lazily flirtatious. “I could just stay like this,” she said, tilting her head up to look at him. “Just right here.”

He knew what she was saying, but—apocalypse, prophecy, Anointed One—Giles pulled himself reluctantly away. “Just this one library book,” he said. “After that, Jenny, I’m all yours.”

He did his best not to think about what that insinuated. It didn’t really work.

Getting out of the car, Giles glanced one last time at Jenny, who was cheerfully flipping through the comics section of the newspaper in the front seat. She gave him a little wave as he walked up to Buffy’s house; it left him feeling even more confused.

It was certainly true that his priorities should first and foremost rest with the fate of the world, and even truer that a Watcher could not afford to place love before duty. He knew these facts intimately and couldn’t bring himself to dispute them, but another, more prevalent fact had arisen: saving the world meant more to him with Jenny in it. Jenny, who didn’t know him as a Watcher, only as her fake husband and verbal sparring partner. He had never really had someone in his life who hadn’t somehow been linked either to the Council or to magic, and having her, now, indisputably added more weight to the importance of saving the world. Protecting Jenny meant protecting the possibility of—

Of bandages after patrol and laughing in faculty meetings and holding someone tight. Of not feeling like some chess piece in an endless battle that would inevitably cost him his life. Being a Watcher had given Giles direction, but the people in Sunnydale were beginning to give him a purpose. It went against everything the Council said, and yet he couldn’t deny that it was making him a much more aware and effective mentor figure to Buffy.

Still quite confused, Giles rang the doorbell. There was the thudding sound of feet on the stairs, and then, flanked by Willow and Xander, Buffy opened the door, her face falling almost comically when she saw him. “That’s Giles,” she said.

“We need to talk,” said Giles simply.

“Buffy’s not home,” Buffy began, trying to shut the door, but Giles managed to squeeze through before she could.

“My calculations may not have been as far off as I thought,” Giles explained, rummaging in his bag to hold up the newspaper.

“Five Die in Van Accident?” Buffy read, frowning.

“Out of the ashes of five shall rise the one,” Giles continued. “That's the prophecy. Five people have died!”

“In a car crash,” said Buffy doubtfully.

“I know it doesn't quite follow,” Giles conceded, “but it’s at least worth investigating.” He pointed a bit lower in the article. “Look! Among the dead was Andrew Borba, whom the police sought for questioning in a double murder. Now, he may be the Anointed One. The bodies have been taken to Sunnydale Funeral Home—”

“Giles, why do you wanna hurt me?” Buffy interrupted.

As usual, Buffy defied any logical expectations. “I beg your pardon?” said Giles, bemused.

“Hey!” came a voice from the open door, and Owen Thurman stepped through, looking a little confused to see Giles there. “Uh, hi.”

Giles stared. “You have a date?”

“Yes, but I will return those overdue books by tomorr—” Buffy stopped, then frowned, squinting at a point over Giles’s shoulder. “Giles,” she said slowly, “is that your wife in the car?”

Giles turned very slowly, then winced. Leaning out the front seat’s open window, Jenny was watching the proceedings with affectionate interest. He made frantic motions for her to go back inside, but she must have misinterpreted them, because she responded with a small wave and a grin in Buffy’s direction.

“That is my wife in the car,” he said heavily.

“So it would be fair to assume that you have a date?” Buffy finished.

“Um, what’s going on?” Owen asked. Willow and Xander tugged him into the other room.

“And you think you can just show up, dump this stuff on me, and leave?” Buffy persisted indignantly. “That’s so not fair! Especially since this stuff isn’t even anything—”

“Buffy, Jenny has been asking why I’m not around to spend time with her,” Giles tried to explain.

“Yeah, well, that’s the gig,” said Buffy, chin jutting firmly out, arms tightly crossed. “Sometimes you have to throw your awesome, perfect, fairytale date out the window for a lead that isn’t even really a lead. If you think this is something to follow up on, Giles, you do it, but I spent a whole night in that cemetery and nothing happened and I need a day off!”

Giles looked at the genuine upset in her eyes. He imagined what it might be like to be feeling the complexities and sadness of not being able to tell Jenny what he wanted to tell her, but as a sixteen-year-old. Really, he thought, Buffy was doing much better than he gave her credit for, and she did deserve a day off after he’d put her through so much the night before. “I suppose it was a rather slim lead,” he allowed, giving her an apologetic smile. “And you’re right. It isn’t fair for me to demand hard work from you while I’m going out with Jenny.”

Buffy immediately uncrossed her arms, once again bouncing delightedly on her toes. “Thank you thank you thank you!” she gushed. “And look, I won't go far, okay? If the apocalypse comes, beep me.”

“Is everything cool?” Owen asked, rounding the corner with Willow and Xander.

“All set!” Buffy chirped.

“Yes, and, uh, you'll face a pretty hefty fine in the morning,” said Giles lamely.

“Well, bye,” said Buffy brightly. “Don't wait up.” Owen at her side, she hurried out the door.

“Is something going on?” Willow asked.

“Oh, uh, probably not, no,” said Giles dismally. He had very much been looking forward to a date with Jenny, but Buffy was right. He ought to set a less hypocritical example. “I suppose I'll just go to the funeral home in case, see if anything comes up.” Without waiting for a response from the children, he exited the house, hurrying down the porch steps and over to his car.

“I’m guessing we’re not going on that date,” said Jenny, studying his expression a little sadly. “What’s wrong?”

“I have to make a quick stop at the Sunnydale Funeral Home,” Giles explained.

Jenny was now giving him a very exasperated look. “That is not a safe place to be, Rupert,” she said. “Why would you—I mean, what would—what did Buffy say to you that would make you think—”

“There was a news report,” Giles explained. “Five dead in a van accident. For research purposes—”

“I’m coming with you,” said Jenny.

“What—Jenny, no, I will not have you willfully putting yourself in danger like that!”

“Oh, and you get to do it whenever you want?” Jenny was full-on scowling. “It’s dark out, this town has a history of unexplained murders, and you tell me you’re going to a funeral home? Stick with those cemeteries I gave you and move on!”

Giles bit back a retort that her cemeteries were pointless to a Watcher, that they were all on sacred ground that made it impossible for any vampire to rise, and that he was a damn sight more prepared for a vampire than she was, especially since she didn’t even know what a vampire really was.“I’m going,” he said instead.

“Well, you’re not going alone,” said Jenny stubbornly, and to Giles’s surprise, she reached out through the open window, taking his hand with surprising gentleness. “You have a wife now, England, and I go where you go, okay?”

And there was something in her eyes that tugged at a lost, lonely part of Giles, the same part that leaned into her touch whenever she was bandaging him up after patrol. No one had ever wanted to go where he went. No one had ever looked at him like he was worth following—only told him that they would lead. He was possibly the most irresponsible, most utterly thoughtless husband on the planet for continuing to place Jenny in the line of fire, but having someone as kind and wonderful as her look at him like that…it was enough to make him say, softly, “Yes, dear,” without even thinking about it.

The Sunnydale Funeral Home was empty, but something had Giles’s Watcher senses on high alert as he stopped the car. “Stay here,” he said, getting out, slinging his bag of supplies over his shoulder, and crossing to the other side. He certainly hoped that it was just nerves, but there was still a pervasive sense that he was being watched—

He thought he heard a noise at his right, and turned, heart in his throat, but there was nothing. Relaxing a bit, he turned back towards the funeral home and found himself face-to-face with a vampire. To his shock, it hissed, an angry, primal sound, and stumbled back, holding its hands up in front of its face as though Giles were holding up…

…a cross.

Turning slowly, Giles saw Jenny, who was holding up a silver cross with a determined expression on her face. She grabbed his hand with her free one and pulled him roughly past the vampire, brandishing the cross as she shoved Giles through the half-open funeral home doors. “Get in!” she shouted, and followed suit, slamming the door shut behind them.

Giles was too stunned to remember to be afraid. “Jenny,” he said slowly, swaying a bit where he stood, “what—how did you—”

“Rupert, it’s okay, I’ve got this,” said Jenny quietly, gripping his shoulder to steady him. Without offering an explanation, she tucked the cross back into her jacket pocket, pulling out a slightly smaller cross on a chain. Quickly, she pulled the chain over Giles’s head, adjusting the cross so that it rested just above his chest. “Did you see their faces?”

“I—what?” Giles managed, still utterly confused.

“Okay, we’re gonna go with ‘no,’” Jenny quipped, smiling a little wryly.

There was a growl from behind them. Without hesitation, Jenny grabbed his hand again, all but towing him behind her and through the dark, winding hallways. Giles stumbled to keep up, slowed mostly by his whirling, panicked thoughts. Jenny with a cross, Jenny using a cross against vampires, Jenny steadying him—he was missing a piece of the puzzle, he felt sure of it.

Jenny pushed him roughly into an empty room, slamming the door shut behind her. Giles regained enough of his sense to first toss his bag onto the table and then help her in barricading the door with a heavy filing cabinet. It was clear that the door would remain shut for the time being, but not forever, and Jenny seemed to be coming to the same conclusions. “You’re okay?” she asked, raising a gentle hand to his face.

Giles felt a bitter taste in his mouth. He didn’t like looking at his wife with such suspicion. “Fine,” he said. “Completely.”

The filing cabinet rattled. Over Jenny’s head, Giles caught sight of Xander and Willow at the barred windows, their eyes wide and worried. Get Buffy, he mouthed in their direction. Xander mouthed back what? Willow, however, nodded, pulling Xander away.

“We need to hide,” said Jenny shakily, looking around the room. “Those guys don’t—they don’t mess around. Believe me, you and I are in no way a match for them.”

“I entirely agree,” said Giles distantly.

Jenny pulled open one of the morgue drawers. “Get in,” she said.

“Jenny—”

“Get in, Rupert, I can’t—please, just, please don’t argue with me right now, I don’t want you getting hurt!” Jenny burst out.

The panicked, half-sobbing note to her voice made Giles take another, slower look at her. There were a lot of emotions in Jenny’s eyes at that moment, but not a single one looked anything close to a dishonest woman. “Jenny,” he said, his voice softening. “Do you think I can’t handle myself?”

Jenny took a long look at him, and then she grabbed the front of his shirt, whirling him around and all but shoving him in the direction of the morgue drawer. Giles fell onto the metal, the back of his head hitting the drawer hard. Involuntarily, he grabbed Jenny’s hands, pulling her on top of him and into the drawer just before the momentum of her shove caused the morgue drawer to pull itself in, then slam shut again with them inside.

Too many things had happened too fast for Giles to process anything.

“I don’t,” said Jenny in the dark. She sounded near tears. “I don’t think you’re totally helpless. I just, I care about you, and this town is such a big, scary place, and you’re a sweet, incredible, wonderful person, and you always have to make things ridiculously fucking complicated, going out by yourself all the time and showing up all bruised, you scare the hell out of me, Rupert,” her babbling was reaching frightening volumes, especially since Giles had heard the crash of the filing cabinet hitting the floor and they were probably ten seconds away from being discovered, “and god, I know you probably think I think you’re helpless, but I don’t, I think you’re too damn smart for your own good—”

Giles couldn’t think of a way to keep her quiet for long enough to keep them both undiscovered. Coupled with the fact that, this close, she smelled of coffee and magic, and that he had just learned that his kind, wonderful wife wanted to protect him from the vampires outside because she cared about him, the conclusion he came to was both inevitable and very stupid. Grabbing Jenny’s face in one hand, he kissed her as hard as he could, winding his other arm around her waist to pull her tightly against him.

He was expecting her to pull back. He was expecting her to pull back, or stiffen in his arms, or hit him as hard as she could without making a sound, because no one was watching them and there was no reason for him to be acting like they were actually a couple. What he wasn’t expecting was for her to shift until her legs were all but twined around his waist, tangle her hands in his hair, and kiss him back like she’d been waiting to kiss him for the last three months.

And all of a sudden, Giles wasn’t thinking about vampires, or prophecies, or any of the things he should by all rights be thinking about: all that was in his mind was a desperate Jenny Jenny Jenny and it seemed almost unending. He wanted to flip her over, press her against the metal, but she had all the leverage and that was oh so excellent too, and oh, oh god, she was kissing his neck, clumsily unbuttoning his shirt, and he was gasping and moaning and she was hurriedly moving up to silence his mouth with another series of breathless kisses—

The morgue drawer door banged open, they were pulled back out and into the light, and Giles heard Buffy say, very loudly, “Oh, you have got to be kidding me!”

Jenny’s lips stilled against Giles’s. Slowly, she pulled herself up and away, and then Giles was staring up at the morgue’s ceiling while Jenny got up and awkwardly dusted herself off. “Buffy,” she was saying. “What—uh, what are you doing here?”

“I hang out in weird places sometimes, I’m a teenager!” Buffy retorted, staring at both of them with horrified eyes. “Why were you getting it on with Giles in a morgue drawer?”

“What I do with my husband after school lets out is my business,” replied Jenny without missing a beat. “Besides which, you can’t tell me this is the weirdest thing you’ve seen in Sunnydale.”

“Oh, it one hundred percent is,” said Buffy disbelievingly. “What, do you and Giles get freaky in crypts too? God, I think I finally get why he likes you.”

Giles made as much noise as possible as he got up from the morgue drawer, which did a thankfully effective job of distracting Jenny from Buffy’s statement. “Um, Jenny, I, I believe that the fellows chasing us are gone now,” he managed. “You should probably head home—”

“And will you be heading home with me?” Jenny asked pointedly.

Giles looked helplessly over at Buffy, who gave him a very clear this is your problem, not mine look. “In a moment,” he said finally. “I just need to have a private word with Miss Summers regarding what is and is not an appropriate place to, ah, hang out.”

Jenny considered this, then nodded. “I’ll wait outside,” she said, fingering her cross, and headed in the direction of the door. Halfway across the morgue, she stopped, considered, turned, crossed the room again, and kissed Giles, a solid, purposeful kiss that left him with a fluttery feeling in his stomach. Then she left.

“I need to bleach my brain,” Buffy informed him. “Seriously. I could hear moaning, Giles, that was not okay.”

Giles decided to ignore this as best he could. “Yes, w-well, two more of the brethren came after us,” he managed.

“After you and your honey, or after the prophecy?” Buffy asked, frowning.

“That’s what we have to find out,” said Giles. “I don't know what these brethren mean to do exactly. Find the Anointed, or—give him something perhaps. It’s all very vague. And the Anointed may be long gone.”

“But he may not be,” said Buffy grimly.

“We must find out,” Giles agreed.

Buffy nodded, then added, “I just need to get Owen and the others out of the way first.”

“Owen?” said Giles. “You brought a date?”

In answer, Buffy pointed indignantly in the direction of the still-open morgue drawer.

“That, that was, extenuating, she wouldn’t stop talking, she’s very—” Giles gave up on trying to explain and pulled out a handkerchief, working instead on cleaning his glasses.

“And for the record,” Buffy added, “I didn't bring him, he came. I’ll take care of it.”

“You can't make him go out there alone, we don't know where the brethren are,” Giles objected, replacing his glasses, and then realized with a sinking feeling that this statement applied to Jenny as well. “Damn,” he muttered. “I’ll search the morgue for the Anointed and keep an eye on Jenny. You—figure out some way to get Owen out.”

“On it,” Buffy agreed, rounding the corner.

Giles then did the quickest morgue search he could manage while Jenny was still waiting for him. As he was opening the second to last drawer, she came back in, still looking a bit pink. “Rupert, I know you’re all about the badly-timed research,” she said nervously, “but now seems like the time to make a speedy exit.”

Good lord. How was he supposed to keep Jenny here? “I have one more drawer—” Giles began lamely.

“Rupert,” said Jenny.

Giles gave up. There was only one clear way to distract Jenny enough to keep her in the morgue. Trying his best not to think too much about what she might think it meant, he crossed the room, taking her in his arms and pressing her gently against the wall. “I’d like to talk about that kiss,” he said, trying to bring back his flirty-confident voice from his Ripper days. He wasn’t quite sure if he managed it.

Jenny raised a hand, tracing his jawline. “Yeah?”

“I’d like to kiss you again,” said Giles, hearing his voice dip lower.

Jenny’s eyes fluttered shut, lips parted, her breathing picking up. She didn’t answer.

“Jenny?”

“Yes,” said Jenny. “Yes, please,” and somehow, even though she was the one up against the wall, it was her grabbing him and pulling him in for another kiss. It wasn’t as brutal, nor as desperate; this kiss, while still dizzyingly passionate, was softer and less urgent than the other. As she pulled back to catch her breath, Giles just had to nuzzle her neck, letting her hair tickle his cheek as he pressed his lips to her throat. “Rupert, we have to go,” she was whispering, but she didn’t sound all that convinced, and honestly, Giles wasn’t either. Outside this night, he wouldn’t ever be this daring, or this bold, and really, what was the point of leaving this moment for one where Jenny Calendar wasn’t squirming as he kissed a spot just above her collarbone?

There was the clatter of footsteps. This time, Giles thankfully had enough presence of mind to pull away from Jenny before Buffy entered. Without a word to him, she rummaged through his bag of supplies, finally pulling out a stake and beginning to hurry away. She then turned, giving Giles a pointed, panicked look, and said, “Make sure the others are okay.”

It was in this moment that Andrew Borba came up behind Buffy, throwing her into a cabinet. She fell to the ground.

“Buffy!” Giles shouted.

Before he could do anything, Jenny had shoved herself in front of him, again brandishing the cross. “Stay back!” she shouted, but Giles could see her hand shaking.

Borba shuddered. “Why does he hurt me?” he demanded, and slapped the cross out of Jenny’s hand, picking her up and throwing her into the crematory controls. Giles didn’t have a moment to register what had happened, because Borba was picking him up too, throwing him in the same general direction as Jenny—

“Ow,” Giles managed.

“Ugh,” Jenny added, smiling a little tiredly, and rested her cheek against his shoulder. “You okay?”

“Quite,” said Giles. He’d only just managed to slam the crematory door shut in time for Borba to burn. “Um, Buffy—?” But Buffy was preoccupied with Owen.

“So, uh, weird night,” said Jenny. Giles caught sight of Willow glancing over her shoulder as she and Xander led Owen out. He tried to direct a reassuring smile in her direction, but his head ached far too badly for him to really manage it. “Can we go home now?”

“Oh, completely,” said Giles, pulling himself awkwardly up with Jenny still leaning against him. “Buffy? Jenny and I will be seeing ourselves home.”

Buffy nodded, but she didn’t quite seem to notice as he and Jenny left.

The cross necklace that Jenny had given Giles was an antique, one carved with covert and meticulous symbols. Research revealed that these symbols were all protection runes, all of them meant to repel demons and vampires and the like, and most of them surprisingly effective in doing so. Obviously, a Watcher couldn’t wear a demon-repelling cross on patrol; that rather defeated the purpose of getting close enough to kill them. It did, however, lend some new clarity to exactly why every single one of the cemeteries Jenny had sent him to had been on ground where vampires wouldn’t rise, as well as why her face tightened every time she said he would be staying late at school.

Giles ran multiple magical tests on the cross necklace. Absolutely all of them said the same thing: that the necklace was an item meant solely to protect. And while that did answer any questions he might have had about Jenny’s feelings towards him, it didn’t at all explain her knowledge of vampires, or exactly what she was really doing in Sunnydale.

[princessyennenga]

The Left Hand Rocks the Cradles - Chapter 2

Previously ...

Scott adjusted his blazer around his shoulders with a shrug.

“Someone with your talents should just accept that offer at a larger, reputable and profitable paper where she can build on the potential for a career legacy. Instead of chasing followers, likes and shares.”

After another 30 minutes, Iris had filled more pages with notes and quotes about the new hospital wing. After working this room, and Scott working her nerves, she was ready to wrap up this assignment. Then the message notification jingled on her phone and re-energized her. It was Barry. Instead of texting a reply, she stole away to a quiet spot near a water fountain and called him back.

“Hi Babe. So good to hear your voice,” Iris breathed.

“Oh yeah?” she could hear Barry’s face open up into a smile on the other end.

“Of course. You're my sunshine,” Iris laughed lightly, still touched that he appreciated her love so much.

“I do my best. So I take it that means your press conference and tour went well?” he said. Iris could hear the clink of heavy glass in the background. A young girl's voice rasped ‘Daddy. Dad! We don't have enough nitric--’ For a brief moment, Barry was distracted, probably by Nora wanting to ‘help’ him with his backlog of cases.

“Hang on just a second Iris, OK?” Iris gave him gave leave to help their daughter, the time traveler, get situated to begin her first round of analysis and reports for the day. He returned with a sigh.

“Just had to get Nora --”

“Situated, yeah, I understand. Listen, you’ll probably need to supervise her, so I’ll let you go --”

“Not so fast, Mrs. West-Allen!” he chided softly. “Catch me up on how things are going. I know you were wondering if Scrat Evans was going to show up …”

“It’s Scott, Barry,” Iris corrected, only half sternly. “And we agreed to take the high road about me having to see him for work every now and then, right? We're not going to be seventh grade about this?”

“Oh yeah! High road. Completely!” Barry assured so earnestly Iris could feel green eyes widen and his head nod. “I mean, I have no reason to dislike the guy. Feel bad for him, actually. Denied!” 

“Barry ...”

“He couldn’t even get a second date … and that coffee at Jitters was technically a story meeting, and not … ”

Just then Iris saw an elegant Black woman with thick salt and pepper hair, cut stylishly short, come into view just 20 feet away.

“Barry, I promise to fill you in when I get to S.T.A.R. Labs later,” Iris said. “I just spotted Theresa Merkel, and she would be good for the article.”

After Barry signed off with few endearments, Iris adjusted the strap of her large tote bag over her shoulder and bobbed through the crowd until she reached Theresa Merkel.

“Mrs. West-Allen. Hello again,” Theresa nodded calmly. “I didn't realize your coverage included the healthcare sector.”

Iris and Theresa exchanged greetings, but not too many pleasantries or small talk. Still, there was no awkwardness between them as Iris got straight to her questions.

“Mrs. Merkel, there was a small footnote near the back of the expansion budget report --” Iris said.

“The budget report?” Theresa was taken aback. “But financials are confidential. How did you obtain …?”

“Just. Connections, I guess,” Iris shrugged.

“And incredible resourcefulness! Well, continue.”

“It was a $13 million line item denoted by ‘PM’ …” Iris said. As she talked, Theresa’s mood shifted noticeably, but not toward hostility. She nodded slowly and took a soft, deep breath, and for a brief second Iris registered a very similar feeling to the one she read from Cecile when Jenna had kept her up for much of the night.

“Yes, well. A $13 million budget item, in my view, was a starting point to address some of the issues that have come to light in Central City recently,” she sighed. “I was not the only hospital board member to realize that many lives have been touched and changed in many ways. More than we can understand.”

Iris looked slightly puzzled, but before she could ask any more questions, a well-built man, fashionably bald, came along and looked eager to steal Theresa’s attention. Theresa recognized him instantly, as ‘Donovan,’ and excused herself from Iris. ‘More than we can understand’ echoed in Iris’ mind as she shook hands with several more hospital staff members while making her way to the coat rack. Most of the journalists for the city’s two largest newspapers had already fled to their offices to write up what they considered fluff pieces before moving on to meatier stories. Their hospital items might get boiled down to a full-page story in the Picture News, or a quick photo story leading the City section of the Central City Tribune, the city’s premiere broadsheet. 

The phrase was reminiscent of what Barry, or The Flash, then The Streak, had told Iris during their first rendezvous on the Jitters rooftop. As she tried to pry out of him how he could do what he did, he answered

‘There’s more to this than you can understand.’

Iris had felt slightly challenged by his answer. How did he know what she was capable of understanding and what concepts were beyond her grasp? His answer, almost a dismissal had fired her curiosity to really dig into who he was. It led Iris to a world of metas.

Barry was right when he excitedly drew a circle around that dot on his equation board in circle around that dot on his equation board in his CCPD lab. The particle accelerator had opened an entire field of science that Central City, and the world, were just beginning to explore.

‘Fully understand.’ Was Theresa Merkel saying that there is a $13 million pediatric meta research facility here? At the children’s hospital?! It was a theory that, if proven to be true, would impact the lives of every citizen of this city, population 1.7 million. A story like that would finally put the Central City Citizen on the map as more than just a “citizen journalist” blog, or “amateur researcher’s” blog or … the “how funny” blog, as Iris had overheard a few hardened career women describe her publication at networking events.      Iris pulled her jacket off the coat rack and rushed out of the hospital. She had her own fluff pieces and bigger stories to plan.

After an easier ride away from the hospital, Iris was energized. She stopped at Jitters to find a quiet, familiar spot so that she could focus. She ordered a chai latte and a small scone, then settled into a favorite spot near one of the tall windows. The winter sun easily reached through bare trees and poured through the uncovered glass windows, warming Iris so much that she had to shake off the duster that she wore over her long-sleeved, wrap silk blouse. She set her phone to 'Do Not Disturb' and opened her laptop. After almost an hour, Iris sat up high in her chair and stretched. She posted a 750-word story to Google Docs for her freelance editor, Julie Greer, to pick up and review. Then she picked up feature stories a couple of college stringers had turned in: a profile on a tattoo artist, and an organization bidding for a paralympic training camp. Over the next 90 minutes Iris swiftly edited the two stringer’s stories and passed them to Julie for a second read. Then they would be placed in the queue for posting, both to the main Web site and to subscribers’ e-newsletters. Another 30 minutes went by as Iris checked emails: a programmer had sent a link for a sample redesign; Emmet, the commission-only ad sales rep had great news about a rideshare service and fashion subscription Website.

And then a peculiar message: one from Theresa Merkel. Actually, her executive assistant. Iris leaned closer to her screen and craned her neck, taken aback at the outreach. Just as she had clicked it open and begun to read it, her video chat app intruded.

“MOM!!” Nora’s brown eyes wide with agitation, blocked the message. “Dad and I have been trying to reach you for the past hour. Where are you? What’s going on? Why is you phone going to voicemail??”

Then Barry’s face slid into the frame, his brows furrowed and his eyes peering into the lens. Iris suppressed a laugh behind her hand. Her adorable nerd husband forgot -- again -- that lenses do not always give up the secrets on the other end.

“I’m sorry, guys,” Iris uncovered her mouth. “Work got away from me a little bit.”

“Hey, no schr---!” Nora fired back.

“Nora!” Barry’s stern tone checked Nora’s language, but not her exuberance.

“Of course. Sorry Mom. But we have lunch plans, remember?” Nora said, glancing back at Barry. “You can’t just go offline for half the morning and not let us know. It’s like Dad says, ‘all family plans come first’.”  

Iris launched into a flurry of apologies as she snapped her laptop shut and collected the pens, notebooks and papers fanned out on the table. Just as she stood up and slid into her duster and camel hair coat, Iris heard the sound of a toddler giggling and babbling. She didn’t see a child, but noticed a brownie float off of another patron's plate, who was so distracted by her own phone that she barely noticed the brazen theft. Then, a young woman bustled past Iris' table, looking frantic. The alarm in the woman's face crested when she saw the dessert seemingly float away on its own. The young woman smacked the food away, causing it to hit the floor. She feigned clumsiness and apologized profusely to the woman who was sitting behind the empty plate, slapping a bill down on the table to pay for a replacement. Iris' interest is piqued when she noticed the young woman looking at the front door, as three more customers pushed the door wide open and walk in. The young woman hurriedly followed the swinging door and looked around. Then, thinking that no one had noticed her, she crouched down and appeared to grab thin air with her hand.

“Barry, Nora, I might be a little late for lunch …”

“Iris, come on! I haven’t seen you all day,” Barry took over the video chat while Nora was in the background grabbing their jackets. Of course, he had seen her just several hours ago, that morning, but to a speedster a few hours felt interminable. 

“Is it the blog relaunch,” he asked, “because you have to be careful not to overwork yourself.”

“No, no Barry, I’m on to something here,” then Iris lowered her voice to a whisper. “Of the *dark matter* variety …”

“Oh! Look, Iris be careful …”

“I will, I will,” Iris said hurriedly, and began to follow the young woman outside from a safe distance. “Look, Barry I have to follow up on this, but I’ll fill you in when I see you a little later. For lunch. Promise.”

After a round of “I love yous” Iris dashed off. She followed the young woman down a busy street, which was beginning to thicken with lunchtime crowds. Every now and then her arm appeared to lift away from her body, tugging her wildly. A couple of times the young woman stopped and looked around her, while Iris hid in a doorway. Finally, the young woman turned at the entrance to a quiet alley, where she crouched down again. She spoke quietly but firmly to *someone* until the air in front of her shimmered and a small child, about three or four years old, appeared. The young woman sighed and spoke to the child again, stroking his arm warmly. Then she took the child by the hand and they walked to a luxury sedan, where she buckled him into a carseat. Iris stayed out of sight as she watched the mother hand over a juice box before buckling herself in and pulling away.

[anduuril]

one look at you, my whole life falls in line

also on ao3

Magnus is met with a shriek of laughter, a crash, and Chairman Meow bolting down the hallway as he portals home. He’s exhausted, having been away for an inane meeting with the High Warlock of Milan that lasted days. Somehow, in dealing with all of that chaos, he’d forgotten that they’d agreed to babysit Madzie for Catarina today.

That explains the racket.

For all the time she spends quietly, Magnus has noticed that she opens up so incredibly to people she trusts. Judging by the voices, he can tell just how much she trusts Alec, and it brings a smile to his sleepy face. He follows the voices, ready to reunite with the love of his life and his favorite pseudo-niece after all that time away.

Their voices lead him to the kitchen, and he’s met with a bigger mess than he’d have thought a grown man and a ten year old could ever create by themselves. What appears to be cake batter drips from the ceiling, and Alec is gingerly picking broken glass from the floor. He’s laughing, so his repeated attempts to tell Madzie to stop using so much magic to stir the batter isn’t exactly being taken seriously, and she flings a spoonful of cake batter his way in retaliation.

Magnus is too amused to bring himself to move from his spot leaning in the doorway. They’re happy, he thinks, in that little bubble - scooping batter into a cupcake pan, not worried about the storm raging outside, or the apparent spike in demon activity in Italy. It’s almost cathartic, to hear their laughter, to watch them be so at ease. All too often, their shoulders are set and heavy with the weight of their lives and their duties - warlock and shadowhunter alike. But Madzie is too young, and Alec needs a break, and Magnus is happy they have this moment. He’s happy for their reprieve.

He’s not naive enough to think there will ever be a time without war. He knows this reprieve won’t last. He’s lived through centuries of it - world wars that decimated humanity, wars in the Shadow World. He’s lived through Valentine twice. He’s no stranger to violence, and he knows it will keep coming. But for once, he wants to believe that there could be peace in the middle of that storm. Peace enough to settle down, to think of the future. To think of a family.

What would it be like, he wonders, to raise a family with Alec?

Losing himself in watching Alec and Madzie in the kitchen, he allows himself to imagine such a future. A future with the laughter he hears ringing in his hears, but with their own child. He sees late nights at bedsides telling stories to sleepy boys that just won’t sleep. He can see babies with curious, wide eyes, and he wants to tell them all of the secrets of the universe. He can see them all in his mind’s eye, different faces, different children - different futures he could have, but each with Alexander.

It’s the first time he’s ever entertained these thoughts before, and yet… he finds that he’s not intimidated by them. Because for more than four hundred years, he’d believed that children, a family, would never be a possibility for him. But it is. It’s a concept so real to Magnus that it almost feels tangible, and his heart is soaring.

“Hey, I didn’t hear you come home.”

Magnus drags his mind back to reality and the man in front of him, and the feeling in his chest only magnifies upon seeing Alec’s expression. He takes a few steps forward so he can wrap his arms around his husband, tucking his face in the crook of his neck, and pressing a kiss there. He feels the tension in Alec’s body release as he holds him, and he knows his relief is just as noticeable - the sigh of contentment he lets out when they touch isn’t exactly quiet.

“Anything new happening around here? Demon attack? The Clave up to no good?” he asks, leaning against the wall again as he pulls back and watches Alec, who only shrugs before launching off into a tale of his week. But then his eyes are locked on Alec, and his attention begins to drift.

“Magnus?”

He’s still talking, he realizes moments later, having been distracted by Alexander’s lips forming words instead of listening to the actual words themselves. But after five days away, he figures he’s allowed to have missed those hands, those lips… The way those hands and lips…

He shakes his head.

“Sorry, you were saying?” Alec’s expression is a mixture of smugness and also exasperation, and Magnus shouldn’t be as amused by it as he is. “I really was listening, Alexander. It’s just been a week, and I…”

“I know, I know.” Alec moves closer, one hand reaching for Magnus’s, the other holding his face gently. He presses a kiss to his forehead, to each cheek, before settling against his lips and giving him the welcome home kiss he deserves. “I love you, and I will show you exactly how much later,” he says, giving Magnus a pointed look that causes a shiver to run down his spine, “but Cat’s going to be here within the hour, so let’s try to be reasonable until then.”

“Duly noted.” Magnus nods and heads off to help Madzie with the rest of the cupcakes, but not before noticing the look of sheer adoration that covers Alec’s face. He’s not sure what he’s ever done to deserve all those glances that he’s always throwing his way, but he also won’t question it. If he had this way, he’d never stop looking at Alec - he’d always be looking at him like he placed the stars in the sky.

++

Magnus watches Catarina and Madzie disappear into the portal before turning to face Alec. Instinctively, they’re drawn to each other, and Magnus slides his arms around Alec’s waist and buries his face in his shoulder. He inhales deeply as Alec holds him close, and he loses himself in that comfort and security.

“I’ve been thinking…” he begins, his voice slightly muffled by the press of his mouth against Alec’s skin. He pulls back, if only to meet his eyes. He doesn’t want to beat around the bush, because this idea is all consuming, and he wants Alec to know how much it means to him. “I think… I think we should have a kid. Or at least think about it. Really consider it.”

Magnus cannot find the words to describe the way Alec’s eyes seem to shine once the words leave his mouth, or the way his grip seems to get just a little tighter. He could try, but for all his years on this earth, he’s never learned the words to explain the joy he sees reflected in his husband’s gaze.

“I want to,” Alec says, and while he’s not surprised that he wants kids, Magnus is still blown away by him voicing it. Alec’s arms untangle from around him so that he can gently hold his face in his hands. He never feels more open than when he’s put in this position, but he’s also never felt more loved. It’s the way Alec does it, touching him so carefully, with a look in his eyes that speaks of nothing but love and undying devotion. “I want that with you, Magnus - a child, a family. I’ve always wanted that. I want everything with you.”

The way Alec says it, so earnestly, is enough to make him fall in love all over again. He’s floating on a cloud as he slides his hand into Alec’s and laces their fingers together. He can feel Alec’s ring against his skin and he can remember so clearly - Alec, on one knee, baring his soul, and Magnus being overcome. And, not long after, wedding vows that still take his breath away. Now, a few years later, with eternity literally in front of them, there’s a new step to take, and he’s excited for it.

“I love you,” he says, even though the words sometimes don’t seem like enough to explain how he feels. He runs his free hand through Alec’s hair, the soft strands tickling his fingers. Alec’s eyes close at the sensation. “Sometimes it feels like we’ve known each other for a thousand different lifetimes.”

“What, like soulmates?” Alec asks, eyes fluttering open again to take in his expression. “Do you really believe that?”

“Alexander, I’ve had countless love stories over the years,” he says, his hand drifting from Alec’s hair to his face, his thumb brushing over his cheek, “but not a single one has ever been like this. All I know is that when I met you, it felt like coming home. Like my soul was built to be with yours.”

Alec’s soft smile is enough to bring tears to his eyes, and he slots their lips together and lets himself be overcome by these emotions. He’s centuries old, and sometimes he feels it. Not in the creaking of bones or the weakening of the mind, but in the memories that come to him in the form of nightmares, and the exhaustion that permeates his very being. He knows he’s a broken man - he has seen and done too much in his lifetime, but Alexander has loved every piece. And a family, an eternity with Alec - it’s all he could have ever asked for, and it’s his. And it’s wonderful.

++

Alec’s sitting in the rocking chair in the corner of the room, Max wrapped in a blanket in his arms. He’s stroking his cheek softly as the words fall from his lips, a lullaby from his childhood, as he rocks the chair back and forth. He doesn’t notice Magnus right away, so he takes a moment to appreciate the scene in front of him. It’s the middle of the night, the sleepy look on Alec’s face gives testament to that, but his eyes as positively glowing as he sings to their son.

Their son.

He’s only been in their lives for a week, but already he’s taken up such a large space in Magnus’s heart. He’s only been in their lives for a week, but Magnus knows he’d walk through hell ten times over, face any demon, do anything, to keep Max safe.

“Did we wake you?”

Alec’s voice brings him back to reality and he shakes his head. He doesn’t sleep well when they’re not together, the press of Alec’s back against his chest the kind of warmth he needs to pull him under. Even if he’d slept through Max’s fussing, he’d have woken because Alec was gone. But he doesn’t mind missing sleep for this. He’d never sleep again if it meant watching Alec, with his messy hair and soft smile, singing their son to sleep.

“Worth it,” he says, coming over to stand beside Alec and press a kiss to his forehead. “It looks like he’s finally asleep.”

“I know,” Alec replies, looking down at the sleeping bundle in his arms. It’s the most beautiful image Magnus has ever seen, and he’s tearing up over it. “But I don’t want to put him down. Is that weird? I don’t want to put him down because I don’t want to stop holding him.”

Magnus lays a gentle hand on Alec’s shoulder in support. He understands, wholeheartedly. He understands because he feels it too, that need to hold and protect. He’s wanted this for so long, and sometimes it doesn’t seem real to him. Sometimes he needs to hold Max, needs that reminder that this is real and not fantasy, that his oldest wish has become his reality.

“I understand,” he says, as he reaches out to take Max from Alec, who pouts. He lays him in his crib, and it takes everything in him to turn away and reach a hand out to Alec. “But you need sleep as well, love. Come on. He’ll still be here in the morning.”

The truth in that statement has him grinning, and he leads Alec back to bed with stars in his eyes and the promise of a million tomorrows. A future that he cannot wait to live through.

++

He comes home to a shriek of laughter, a crash, and Chairman Meow bolting down the hallway. He follows the noise to the kitchen where Alec and Max are cleaning up their attempt at dinner from the floor, and he lets out a sigh of relief. It’s only been a few years since Max came into their lives, since having a family became a reality instead of an unrealistic dream, but now it’s the only reality Magnus would ever accept.

“You’re home!”

Magnus bends down to scoop Max in his arms as he runs to him, and spins him around a few times before setting him back down. He’s getting emotional, and it’s silly because Max is almost four and this is his daily life, but sometimes it’s just overwhelming. Plus, he’s been gone all weekend dealing with warlock business and he missed his family.

Alec’s looking at him like he understands exactly what Magnus is thinking - and he probably does, since he’s spent weekends away for work himself - and meets his lips for a kiss.

“Welcome home,” he says, pulling back to see Magnus’s face. He brushes his thumb across his cheek, and Magnus melts. “I hope you know three days is an incredibly long time to be away, and we’ve missed you terribly.”

Magnus presses another kiss to his lips and wraps his arms around Alec. With his face pressed into his neck, he thinks about how incredible all of this is. It’s only been ten years or so, which is nothing to an immortal, but the three of them have eternity in front of them, and Magnus is so excited to see what their future holds.

[nayrusfountain]

Under the Moonless Sky

It was late. The distant melody of the Clock Town bells had long since echoed the coming of night, urging the Terminian denizens to retire into their welcoming homes. And yet to Mikau and many other night going Zoras, it signifies the time roam in the covers of the night. Their time to swim...To go to work. To play and chase the neon waves...

Their time to properly worship their Divine Mother.

Being nocturnal, the fin bladed Zora stalked the nightly beaches, his clawed flippers sinking into the cushiony, soft sand. The chirps of crickets rang cheerfully on the palm trees, and the faint song of a lone wolf sang mournfully into the night. Fireflies flash their gentle glow around him, hoping to attract a potential mate with their light display. And sea turtles emerged from the sea to lay their eggs. Mikau loves the night. While humans have a natural fear of what lurks in its darkness, Mikau and many other nocturnal Zoras see it as a time of mystical beauty and harmony.

The starry heavens twiddle and danced far above him, their star dust sprinkling into the illuminating ocean. The constellations of Zoran spirits and Gods litter over the sea and beyond, watching over their Zoran children of Termina. The ocean waves gently crash onto the white, sandy shoreline of Great Bay, the frothy foam sizzling as it retreated back into the ocean. Blue lights bloom from the surfing waves, with Zoras crashing through its watery barrier and spreading the neon glow soaring into the air. They launched at the glittering blues with their mouths open and teeth gleaming, and upon closer inspection, are revealed to be firefly squids. Mikau had already eaten some before arriving to the beach, and merely glance at his hungry fellows with mild interest. He had however stared worryingly at the cosmic Terminian skies.

Normally, there would be two Terminian Moons visible in the heavens, each one belonging to their respective Gods. The Hylian Moon of the mythical Fierce Deity watch proudly from his divine sky throne, watching over his Hylian subjects.

Nayru's Moon, however, is nowhere in sight.

Concern, Mikau try not to think much of it, but the absence of his people's Lunar Deity is cause for worry. Such a thing never befell the Zoras before, and he honestly doesn't know how to cope with the bizarre situation. Nayru meant everything to his race, from myths to the very culture his society thrives on, she is what kept the Zoras together as a family. Even the concept of courting with mates are reliant on her guidance; their holy Mother acting as a priest that permanently merge the lover’s souls into one entity. 

He continued on his way, stroking the weary turtles in reassurance as they drag themselves onto shore.The reptile closed their eyes in comfort at the Zora’s soothing touch. Occasionally he’ll help a few individual that appears to be struggling to make way for a decent nest in the crowding beach, carry them to a more private spot and guarding them from annoying predators who dare messes with the life giving balance being bestow upon by his favorite animal. 

Suddenly, a soothing tone echo in the night, drowning out the sounds of crickets and dulling the waves. Mikau perked and listen, toning in to the song coming from up ahead the beach. It was gentle, calm, and familiar. He followed the song, recognizing it all to well. Someone's singing the song of the Zoran Goddess, perhaps trying to bring out her Moon from hiding. Mikau approach the Beavers' Waterfall, and set his sights on an elegant Hylian woman singing by the shoreline, strumming her harp as she pour her heart out to ocean. Her voice captivated the Zoran Hero, and he watch with awe as sang Nayru's Song. The Zora approach, and watch her preform in the night. She wore a regal blue dress, a golden necklace with a moon pendant and the Zora's Sapphire on her mid section. Her blue hair ripple and rose like the waves, and her voice is purer than any mortal could ever have. Mikau was simply entrance by her beauty. Normally he would've run back into the ocean at the sight of a stranger, but this woman felt different. He felt like he truly know her for a long time.

She finished her song, and look over to the curious Zora with eyes bluer then the ocean itself. They were the color of sapphires, just like his own. Her body gave off a heavenly warm glow, and her eyes were kind and wise. Mikau's eyes grew wide, suddenly gaining the realization of who this mysterious person might be.

"Are you...our Divine Mother?"

The mysterious woman nodded in the Zora's direction, her sapphire orbs resembling the lunar pearls rumored to litter the sacred Moon's surface. Her ears suddenly flutter, and upon closer inspection, Mikau saw that they were tiny blue fins flapping like small wings. Her blue nails are unusually sharp to be that of a regular Hylian, almost resembling Zoran claws. And when she smiled, the snowy Zora saw small canines among her otherwise normal human teeth.

The woman approach the shark like Zora calmly. Mikau remain where he stands, caught in a trancelike state as the blue haired being approached him. In any other situation, Mikau would've lengthen his fins as a warning to potential dangers, swaying his arms slowly and glaring intently as his colorful patches glowed bright red. His Zoran Hero breed are naturally weary of strangers, especially humans. His past experiences with people from land had its ups and downs, and usually he'll sulk away at the sight of unfamiliar faces.

But this person...It's almost like she has the very essence of the Goddess of Wisdom herself.

"Your time in this world will be numbered with great challenges, my child," the woman suddenly said, her motherly smile turning into that of a sad one. Her voice was angelic yet eerie, otherworldly even. It reverberated and echo across the Bay and beyond the sea, suddenly alerting the sensitive Terminian Zoras of a supernatural presence. They darted off, spooked by the ghostly voice as they dive into the safety of the inky depths. The firefly squids they were preying on relax and let the waves carry them, relief overriding their systems.

Mikau shiver at her divine, godly voice, his fins twitching and tail stiff. He had however regain his composure and blink in confusion at her words.

"W-what do you mean...?"

The female stare up to the starry skies, her eyes twinkling. The Zoran Hero follow her gaze, noting she had directed her sights on the Fierce Deity's Moon. The Hylian God of War seems to be staring down at him, his lunar body seemingly dimmer than he originally thought. Mikau never paid much attention to the particular God beforehand, knowing his guardianship is for the Hylians rather than the Zoras. As such, while still respected by the Zoras, they generally don't worship him.

But this time, the God is directing his gaze to him. Mikau could feel the Deity's cold stare piercing into his soul, and a chill spiked up his spine.

The woman continue staring at the sky, her eyes swirling into shimmering whirlpools. Mikau watch her eyes closely and carefully, and through their watery, glassy gaze, a brief vision of the heavens shone through. Starry images of deceased Zoras swam with grace in her vision, and the Godly constellations of Nayru's divine children seems to react with urgency, standing in between the souls and the mortal world protectively.

"The Goddess of Time came to me in a vision," the female finally reply. "A great yet impossible task will befall you and two others across the land."

"Impossible? But I fought many foes before, milady," Mikau stated with a flexing of his muscles. "I have protected the ocean from many threats with my very life, and served you well. What could possibly be such a challenge that it'll prove 'impossible?'"

"I cannot reveal much, but I will tell you this. One day a young Hylian child from an alternate world of our own will be bestowed upon Termina. When the time is right, your fates will intertwine, and that alone will mean the difference between life or death. Your strengths will become one. Your souls will connect. This will be your ultimate test, one that'll decide the fate of the world."

"The world huh?" Mikau murmur to himself. He thought the situation over, letting the information seep into his conscience. "I don't understand. How would a Hylian child help me in my task?"

"You'll understand when the time comes," the woman said, her body beginning to dissolve into sprinkling star dust. Mikau grew alert, reaching out for the mystical being. But one look into her eyes stopped him in his tracks.

The blues expanded entirely, turning the once Hylian-like eyes into Zoran eyes. Two great, purple fins grew from her ears and reposition themselves on the top of her head, like a pair of sails. Her liquid hair solidified and turn into a long, finned tail. Her dress evaporated and in turn an elegant Zoran body were revealed. Fins draped from her sides and ankles, and two large, purple bladed pectoral fins span out of a running line of jagged blades and tower and draped on both arms. Her fists were also armed with smaller dagger like fins as well as her shoulders.

The more she dissolves, the more her Zoran features revealed itself. Mikau watch in astonishment as the divine being disappears in a starry mist. The winds of Farore picked up the twinkling particles and cast it away to the heavens. A moment of cloudiness ensures in an particular area in the sky, and when they departed, Nayru's Moon shone proudly over the seas once again. Mikau watch as the Goddess of Wisdom accompany the Fierce Deity, their Moons brimming with confidence.

Despite the uncertainty of the situation in the unknown future, Mikau couldn't help but smile at Lunar Deities, their confidence rubbing off of him. The gentle breeze blew at his fins from the sea, and the Zora decided to retire for the night, making his way back to Zora Hall where his band is currently staying for the month. He doesn't know what to expect exactly...

But when the time of his great task comes, he'll be ready to once again Termina well.

And hopefully, so will the little Hylian.

Just a little story I did a long time ago for a Amino challenge. Hope you like it. 

[buzrushblog-blog]

Question Answer Website

Wisdom and Knowledge are obtained only if there is a fascination to know a thing, together with the need could just accomplished once you requests inquiries, and responding to these kind of concerns functions perfectly when the synergy within the masters functions.

Nothing may be more advanced than an on-line software whereby all questions of a understanding seeking out aspirants are usually settled. We have elicited the finest WordPress themes that will enable you to get your job done if you are planning to launch yourself on the world wide web and start a forum where all the questions can be answered.

These Wordpress platforms concepts can be utilized by finance and banking community, i . t . sector, technical support corporations, internet business procedure contracting out and similar other from the very similar large amount.

Go through to this collection of WordPress themes if you are planning to provide a Question Answer Website for your audience.

You will choose from any of the directly below-mentioned topics to make your site.

Also review the just below blog post for issue resolution forum deliver the results collection

Ideal Free & Compensated Query Help answer Discussion forum Word press Plugins

1. ForumEngine

This can be a incredible topic which will help which will make discussion boards without any coding capabilities and practical information. It truly is supplemented with advanced adjustments and up graded reactive benefits like personalized online community skin, Gravatars, huge terms possible choices, an ideal forefront-final and lower back-finish. The design proposes to start off your dialogue message boards on Wordpress platforms hosted homepage.

We have a articles or blog posts classification department around the home page from the topic, the place the many problem and provide answers to debate could take destination. We have a “Statistics” area around the home page of your concept just where all of your current members, the amount of threads you possess and the sheer numbers of replies can certainly be explained, exploring the subject further, you will find a “category” section where all your site areas might be demonstrated.

Primary functionality:

•It gives you fast seek out preview on the header which assists the users to access simply the right answers.

•Offers you sticky line enabling a computer owner to stick or pin a publish on top of the display.

•Supplies quickly consumer enrollment and login element

•It gives full studies. You can look at member, threads and replies stats instantly.

•Allows the power to sometimes agree or reject themes that can be not of this viewers concern.

•Set subscibers to be a moderator who helps to manage soft, large-quality conversations.

•Offers you private room the place that the customer can all routines highly relevant to their submitted threads.

•Presents client suspending program.

2. QAEngine

QAEngine is often a whole community purpose inbuilt Wordpress blogs theme to provide owners to have their discussion boards live with the very least work. It consists of its specialized site structure and will be offering uncomplicated user interface. Except for this, this also supplies adequately-been able product taken care of within the returning-side administrative solar panel.

The discussion forum has niche which presents amount of basic questions with their right answers, one can show do you know your latest content material and besides that one can indicate a number of tags, categories, badges and users to the sidebar on the motif. You may filtering your improvements you want your clients to experience. The web template has poll part expressing volume of polls each website.

Primary Capabilities:

•Simple and optimized UX

•Allows the end user to review and learn about systematically with category and tags

•Offers you Badge and matter program which helps to improve a personalized branding

•It gives live life notice for brand new interactions and content, or anything else.

3. Insight Structure

It is an superb Wp Subject for wiki and data base sites. The style finest can handle your customers through providing distinctive features. You can include bbPress plug-in to this particular concept. bbPress plugin offers you ease ofintegration and use, website measures, and swiftness.

The motif incorporates a seek out club exactly where very important statistics might be explored, all useful items may be shared with your web page tourists with the aid of this motif. You are able to deliver links to several articles subjecting your QA time are usually given to a web site users who would like to acquire, share and gain education.

Key Includes:

•Its well receptive i.e. built-in Facebook Bootstrap, HTML5 And CSS3

•Offers you full localization help support and possesses .po and .mo documents

•It has 5 skin tone designs

•Offers you some types of place formatting supports: , and footageImage and Standard

•A trio of WebpageTemplates and Faqs, communicate with (with ajax based mostly contact form) and completely full-thickness internet page Design template (without having sidebar).

•Young child XML and Theme transfer report listed

•Many shortcodes.

4. HelpGuru

HelpGuru can be a personal-company help and support Wordpress platforms know-how starting point motif. It is actually complemented in a responsive, clean and functional design and style which is certainly useful in trade name exposure. It offers a tremendous structure for building an enjoyable knowledgebase web-site.

The HelpGuru includes a research club area exactly where your complete content and QA subject matter are generally looked. The design is backed which has a 3 column characteristic vicinity in which educative news and topics is usually insured. It is possible to exhibit your preferred article content and good facts could be displayed via this wonderful Wp Style.

Key Capabilities:

•Advanced live customizer help, keep control of colours and written text

•Help you to get opinions on content articles which provides room or space for betterment

•Can provide drag and drop category and article purchasing

•Language translation all set po/mo files integrated

•Consist of kid idea

•HTML5 and CSS3 assist

Inquire Me can be described as responsive WordPress subject through an remarkable user interface. It truly is retina set and contains an uncomplicated layout and design. The design may be a incredibly easy to customize web template for Q&A internet sites and he has endless shade possible choices. Inquire Me has various clients possible choices.

The style of AskMe is frameworked with multiple web page web themes as being a logon post in which a website visitor can provide a merchant account upon your location, number of tab as being a new topic, a short time ago respond to, most react and without any reply for the simplicity of clients to traverse your discussion board content and articles. Also, it helps RTL attribute which means your guest via the area like Arabic are also able to make full use of your web site.

Crucial Features:

•Features unlimited sidebars and colours

•3 Headers fashion Brightness and dark

•A variety of Webpage Layout

•33 web site designs with changes selection

•19 tailored widgets

•Custom made record colors, image and custom structure

5. Strong QAndA

Powerful Q&A make sure your website seems to be appealing and attractive utilizing its sizeable range options. Refined Q&A also provides custom-made subscribe and logon pages for individuals to ensure that each individual customer has got an individual report.

The excellent characteristic of your style is innovator table that permits you to showcase premium person in your webpage, plus it creates a separate place for trying to sell your association designs, ajax structured hunt panel which offers speedy and others handy search results towards user.

Crucial Functionality:

•Sign Up comes with re-Captcha spam opportunity

•Inquiry askers be capable of select the most effective the answers and like them.

•Enables the new member to say on any issue, respond to or opinion them to truly feel is not actually appropriate to web site.

•Members can keep track of their site’s search engine ranking.

6. Assistance Table

Aid Table really is a receptive education bottom level WordPress subject. It is simple to provides and personalize great service for your personal person. It enable your site conform simply to your panel dimensions that provides your online visitors an unbelievable browsing knowledge.

The design delivers AJAX live search offer to supply immediate advice strategy for ones clients, also an incorporated bbPress wordpress tool that will help to make cherished romantic relationships considering the consumers, reveal your organisation features and services by having an astounding typeface fantastic icon in several column offer space.

Vital Capabilities:

•It happens to be absolutely suitable for BBPress which will help to enhance intimate relationship along with your purchasers

•Already have AJAX live search option which contributes to acquiring easy resolutions

•Supplies you webpage for FAQs

•Absolutely works with Seo optimization plug-ins like Yoast Seo optimisation

•Involves language translation

•Superb Sustain From An Professional Publisher

•Deals 3 Tailor made Widgets (Most popular Blog posts & Favored Toggles, Alerts and Articles Tabs And Accordions)

•Multilevel Cartoon The navigation

7. Flatbase

Flatbase is usually a professional and clean idea that provides an extensive web site web template to acquire a information foundation online site. This makes your site start looking modern and fashionable. It brings together a Understanding Starting point, FAQs, Online forums with bbPress incorporation and produces a lot more great features.

The discussion of Flatbase is packed with assorted attributes which a comprehensive multi functional choice for developing your possess support service site. The style is completely appropriate for WPML with PO And MO files means there is no will need to reveal any foreign language translator wordpress tool an incorporated dialect switcher is predefined.

Essential Characteristics:

•Already have know-how bottom that can help customers find answers.

•Power local community community by bbPress which is perfect for consumers contact

•Has AJAX based live life search which helps your operator to gain advice fast.

•Vast style and design features and options

•Review your customization aided by the enjoy customizer

•Convert your style by making use of Poedit

•Internet search engine optimized and clear html coding

•completely sensitive WordPress motif

8. Handbook

Guidebook is really a distinguished Wordpress blogs subject. It consists of quite a few realistic and useful benefits, and a wonderful structure which could without difficulty make an impression your opportunity employers and customers. The topic is integrated with .po and .mo records that provides to target huge group.

A solid administration panel of Manual subject allows you to customize your site blog as you want, it means you can individualize header layout taste, Google and yahoo typeface icon will let you indicate different aspect and features of the help support endeavor, an independent portion with parallax experience effect which you could showcase homepage standing this includes number of plans and pleased purchasers, time for major icon for quick menu.

Significant Attributes:

•AJAX established live life browse element aids the user in order to get resolutions really fast

•Perfectly tailor-made

•Completely Sensitive

•Gives two headers and footers design

•Offers to like and dislike articles with societal giving ability

•Youngster Design Well matched

•Wonderful Search engine optimizing Built in

•Trial XML register involved

9. Instantaneous Q&A

Instant Q&A is definitely a tailor-made Word press design template that offers to go any Wp site as a impressive question and answer online site. It functions preferred with Wordpress platforms 4.4.2.

Instant Q&A WordPress theme is a thriving option for creating a customer support based website, an integrated user login & signup page template, one customer can make multiple accounts also they can generate their own password, users can also change their password in future, a forget password module for your site member to retrieve password if they forget.

Significant Includes:

•Turnkey Issue And Solution online site option

•Custom Join Up with client-developed security passwords

•New member Account Pages and posts

•Gravatar Incorporation

•Unique Best solution sites for Giving answers to Concerns

•Star Standing Procedure exactly where customers get paid issues for asking and answering doubts

https://community.buzrush.com/

[newstfionline]

11-Year-Old Has Spent Her Life in Jail, a Serial Killer as a Cellmate

By Rod Nordland, NY Times, Dec. 3, 2017

JALALABAD, Afghanistan--Meena got chickenpox, measles and the mumps in prison. She was born there, nursed there and weaned there. Now 11 years old, she has spent her entire life in prison and will probably spend the rest of her childhood there as well.

The girl has never committed a crime, but her mother, Shirin Gul, is a convicted serial killer serving a life sentence, and under Afghan prison policy she can keep her daughter with her until she turns 18.

Meena was even conceived in prison, and has never been out, not even for a brief visit. She has never seen a television set, she said, and has no idea what the world outside the walls looks like.

Her plight is extreme, but not unique. In the women’s wing of the Nangarhar provincial prison here, she is one of 36 children jailed with their mothers, among 42 women in all. But none of the other children have spent such a long time in custody; most of their mothers’ sentences are much shorter.

Locking up small children with their mothers is a common practice in Afghanistan, especially when there are no other close relatives, or fathers are absent or estranged. Child advocates estimate that there are hundreds of imprisoned Afghan children whose only crime is having a convicted mother.

There is a program that runs orphanages for children whose mothers are imprisoned, but the women have to agree to let their sons and daughters be taken, and the program does not cover many areas of Afghanistan, including Jalalabad.

At Meena’s prison, the women’s cells are arranged around a spacious courtyard, shaded by mulberry trees, and the children have free rein of it. There is a set of rusting, homemade swings, monkey bars and slides that end in muddy puddles.

A schoolroom is in one of the cells, with a white board and a mixture of benches and chairs, seating 16 children at eight desks. A single teacher looks after three grades, first through third, an hour a day for each grade; at age 11, Meena has reached only the second grade.

When I met with Meena, she sat down, clutching a yellow plastic bag under her shawl. “My whole life has passed in this prison,” she said, during a tense interview in the women’s wing last month. “Yes, I wish I could go out. I want to leave here and live outside with my mother, but I won’t leave here without her.”

Meena was soft-spoken, composed and well-mannered, with a cherubic round face framed by a modestly drawn hijab. Her mother was chain-smoking, brash and outspoken, tattooed in a country where tattoos are considered irreligious, her head scarf askew to reveal henna-streaked hair.

“How do you think she feels?” Ms. Gul said, impatient at what she derided as stupid questions. “It’s a prison, how should she feel? A prison is a prison, even if it’s heaven.”

A question about why Ms. Gul would not let her daughter leave infuriated the mother even more. She launched into a diatribe against the Afghan president. “You, Mr. America, tell that blind man Ashraf Ghani, your puppet, your slave, tell him to get me out of here,” she said. “I didn’t commit any crime. My only fault is that I cooked food for my husband who committed a crime.”

The man she calls her husband, Rahmatullah (they were never legally married), was convicted along with her son, her brother-in-law, an uncle and a nephew for their role in the murders and robberies of 27 Afghan men in 2001 to 2004. Afghan prosecutors said Ms. Gul was the ringleader.

Working as a prostitute, Ms. Gul brought home her customers, many of them taxi drivers, and served them drugged kebabs, after which her family members robbed, killed and then buried them in the yards of two family homes.

All six were sentenced to death, and the five men were hanged. Ms. Gul, however, got pregnant while on death row, so her own hanging was delayed. After she gave birth to Meena, her sentence was commuted to life in prison by the president at the time, Hamid Karzai, according to Lt. Col. Mohammad Asif, the head of the women’s cellblock here.

Ms. Gul first claimed that she had never confessed to the crimes, then said she had been tortured into confessing to them. Frustrated, she made clawing gestures across a table and hissed, “I’ll kill you. I’m going to come over there and take out your eyes.”

Meena touched her lightly on the shoulder to try to calm her down, put a forefinger to her lips and said, “Shh.” Her mother subsided, briefly.

The girl was still holding the yellow plastic bag; inside was a bundle wrapped in a carefully folded red and white kitchen towel.

“What’s in there, Meena?” I asked.

“Pictures of my father.”

She proudly unwrapped them to show them off. Meena and her mother rarely get visits, and never from family members or friends, all of whom are either dead or estranged. Part of the reason Meena is still behind bars is that she has no surviving relatives who would take her, even if her mother allowed it.

Or as Ms. Gul explained it: “I have many enemies. I wouldn’t trust anyone to take Meena outside.”

The photos were of Rahmatullah, whom Meena calls her father: portraits, snapshots on holiday, pictures of him with Ms. Gul.

Rahmatullah (who like many Afghans had only one name) was also convicted of killing Ms. Gul’s legal husband, a police colonel, when Ms. Gul and Rahmatullah were having an affair. The colonel’s body was among those found buried in the yards of the family homes in 2004. Rahmatullah was also a convicted pedophile and thief and reputedly a former Taliban commander.

What he almost certainly was not, however, was Meena’s biological father; the dates do not fit. He was already in jail when he implicated Ms. Gul in the murders, and they were in different prisons in different cities at the time of Meena’s conception. Afghan officials said that an unknown prison officer was Meena’s birth father, and officials accused Ms. Gul of deliberately getting pregnant to avoid the gallows.

Meena went through the photographs one after another, lingering over some, including two of Rahmatullah dead, after his hanging, in a burial shroud but with his face visible; it was not a pretty sight.

In a 2015 interview with The New York Times, Ms. Gul admitted that she and Rahmatullah had killed her husband together.

She denied it when I spoke to her. “It was all Rahmatullah’s fault,” Ms. Gul said. “I would not be here if it wasn’t for him. They should execute me, then Meena would have cried for one day, and it would be over. Instead I am crying every day; it’s a slow death, dying all the time.��

In her calmer moments, Ms. Gul had a simple, chilling message to convey: Meena deserves her freedom. But she won’t get it unless her mother does, too.

“Tell Ashraf Ghani that!” she demanded.

Children in jail is a scandal without an easy solution, advocates say. “When you didn’t commit a crime, you shouldn’t be punished for it, and those children did not commit any crimes,” said Bashir Ahmad Basharat, the director of the Child Protection Action Network, a quasi-governmental agency.

Keeping the children in prison is against both international norms and Afghan law, Mr. Basharat said, despite the practice being so widespread. “But it’s something where we don’t have other alternatives.”

The country’s approximately 30 women’s prisons have several hundred children accompanying their mothers, he said. The women’s wing at the Pul-e-Charkhi prison in Kabul now has 41 children who are younger than 5.

As Afghan prisons go, Nangarhar’s women’s facility appeared to be comparatively uncrowded and well maintained. The 36 children there on the day I visited ranged in age from three days to 11 years; Meena was the oldest.

The women and their children share 10 relatively large cells, with two double bunk beds each, so many of them sleep on mattresses on the floor. Only the compound as a whole was locked up, not the individual cells, so it did not appear prisonlike, aside from the huge steel gates to the outside and the coils of barbed wire atop two rows of surrounding double walls.

Meena sat through her mother’s tirades impassively, sometimes with a thin, sweet smile. She became more animated talking about her best friend, Salma, 10. She said their favorite pastime was playing with their dolls.

Meena said she and Salma created their own dolls, named Mursal and Shakila, out of bits of cloth and string. “Both of them are girls,” she said.

When it was time to say farewell, Meena shook hands with everyone politely, then went to the other end of the courtyard with Salma, arm in arm, still carrying her yellow plastic bag.

[rebeccahpedersen]

Hard Lofts: Brick-And-Beam vs. Art Deco Style

TorontoRealtyBlog

Call this a poll within a blog, since I’m starting to wonder which hard loft style is more desirable among the buyer pool.

I’ve always assumed that the “brick-and-beam” style of hard loft is, by far, the most sought after in the city, but the “art deco” style has seen some huge valuations as of late.

Let me distinguish between the two, provide some photos, and ask for your opinion – whether you’re an active buyer, or simply playing along…

Every conversation, with every first-time condo buyer, goes the same way.

At some point, whether it’s in the very first paragraph of the email, or whether it’s a the end – sort of a “wishful thinking PS,” the buyer mentions a loft.

I get it.

We all watched Friends.

Monica & Rachel had this unbelievable New York City loft, with exposed red brick in the kitchen, wooden beams in the hall, 12-foot ceilings, and that massive industrial warehouse-style window where they spied on “Ugly Naked Guy.”

Fast-fast forward 15-years for those of us who were coming of age when Friends first hit airwaves, or even consider those younger than us who watched on DVD box-set, and everybody starts their mental condo search by picturing a loft.

If you go online and Google “Monica & Rachel…” it will auto-complete “apartment” for you, as well as “floor plan,” which is really cool.

The apartment looked to be about 1,500 square feet, and the answer to the obvious question, “How in the world could they afford that?” was the back-story that it was rent-controlled because it was in Monica’s grandmother’s name.

I know, you’ve heard this story before, quite possibly on this blog!

But it bears mentioning because it helped set the stage, along with a host of other variables, for some very unrealistic condo searches.

I love lofts.  I love visiting them, and I love selling them.  I get genuinely jealous when my clients buy them.

Lofts are, and always have been, red-hot.

Look no further than an astronomically-priced $2.75 Million unit at the iconic Candy Factory last week, which, already priced at almost $1,200 per square foot, ended up selling for almost $700,000 over the list price.

It was truly, by the very definition, “one-of-a-kind” in Toronto, and I’m willing to be some of the city’s elite were lined up to buy it.  In fact, I’d bet whoever came 2nd and 3rd in that bidding war, is probably already regretting not going higher.

That was a hard loft, as opposed to soft; the latter of which are essentially fake – created from scratch to look like hard lofts.

Hard lofts are conversions from existing buildings, notably warehouses, office buildings, or other commercial/industrial structures that served a different purpose in their former lives.

Let’s leave soft lofts for another day.

Today, my question is very simple: when it comes to true hard lofts, do you prefer the “brick-and-beam” style, with exposed brick walls, timber ceilings, and wooden beams, or the “art deco” style with a fluted concrete columns, epoxied concrete floors, and a cleaner, more modern look?

Tough call.  And might I say, to each their own.

I have a few clients in the Imperial Lofts on Sherbourne Street, and one of them recently noted the price discrepancy between the art-deco style building at 80 Sherbourne and the brick-and-beam style building at 90 Sherbourne.

A unit at the art-deco style 80 Sherbourne recently sold for a whopping $875/sqft.

A unit, just listed, at the brick-and-beam style 90 Sherbourne, is asking around $800/sqft.  And what’s more, is the last sale in the building was for a mere $705/sqft.

Even comparing apples to apples, some are green, and some are red.  The recent sale at 90 Sherbourne versus the current listing at 90 Sherbourne could represent other variables, explaining the price.

But the art-deco style building seems to be commanding a premium these days, and it motivated me to ask my readers which style they like better.

Let me give you a few examples of the two styles, drawing on some of the more well-known of each.

ART DECO STYLE LOFTS

Here are a couple of photos from a unit at Imperial Lofts:

Note in this unit, they’ve used fake brick, which I find is a huge style clash:

This is another unit at 90 Sherbourne Street, same characteristics, but a completely different feel as they’ve used a lighter colour palette:

Here’s another example, which shows how open concept these places can be.  Yes, brick-and-beam lofts can be open concept too – even moreso, when you have no bedroom wall.  But the art-deco style often offers a bit “cleaner” look and feel:

And here we see another common feature – the steps, which are prevalent in all three buildings I’m showing today:

This is a unit at the iconic Tip Top Lofts, which shows how those fluted or “mushroom” columns can work both for and against you, depending on the position:

Updating, staging, and photography can make a big difference.  That last photo left much to be desired.

Here’s a really nice example of the 2-storey industrial art-deco style:

Here’s a unit at the Merchandise Lofts, which are very industrial in feel, and the common critique is that the spaces are long and narrow, and natural light is often a problem:

Notice the unit below feels a little “warmer” with the inclusion of hardwood flooring:

Last but not least, the Brewery Lofts on Sumach Street, which are known for the massive 14-16 foot ceilings, and fluted columns:

There is often so much empty wall space in these units, that owners will get creative – like this person below, who re-purposed some old doors to give the unit some character:

  BRICK-AND-BEAM LOFTS

Here are a few units at the Broadview Lofts, which you would probably include on any “Top Five” list of Toronto hard lofts:

These check all the boxes for the hard-loft, brick-and-beam enthusiast.

Note the steel door in the photo below.  Brick, beams, columns, picture windows, and add a steel door just for good measure:

They’ve also done a good job of keeping the “authenticity” when it comes to the staircases, which are metal, as opposed to a more modern glass railing, or something like a wooden-spindle which would completely bastardize the look and feel of a hard loft.

Here’s a similar look and feel at the Robert Watson Lofts in Roncesvalles:

As I noted with the fluted columns in the art-deco style lofts, the timber columns in some of these hard lofts can be awkwardly placed, or, they could be incorporated into the layout:

We’re seeing a lot more photos like this one on MLS, which show the character and hard-loft features, rather than the actual space itself:

Last but not least, the crown-jewel of Liberty Village, the Toy Factory Lofts:

Maybe by this point it’s, “Seen one, seen ’em all,” but keep in mind that I’m picking the best brick-and-beam hard lofts in the city, and choosing the best photos from the archives.  Plus, you’ve got great stagers (or owners with really good style, who know where the outdoor flea markets are…) who incorporate things like the water bag and wagon wheel in the photo below:

I honestly don’t get tired of these photos that show the character.  It’s better than a fifth photo of the kitchen…

–

So there you have it, folks.

A pretty good representation of “art deco” style versus “brick and beam.”

What’s your fancy?

And why, if you don’t mind my asking…

The post Hard Lofts: Brick-And-Beam vs. Art Deco Style appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

Originated from http://ift.tt/2hgv11t